The Typewriter

Species on the edge of its extinction. Almost 140 years old. Survived long enough to pass on the knowledge set of one century to the next. My first memory of spotting a typewriter was at my maternal grandfather's small shop in our native town back in India. Must have been the early 1980s. The whole space resonated with hard clicking sounds. Sounds strongly etched in childhood memories. Those were the times when paper and its carbon copies were still heavily used to write official documents and letters.  

Things seemed simple and permanent. Things still flowed in the physical space. Time was in abundance. Paper was expensive. Ink was not cheap. The mind worked hard to extract thoughts deeply hidden in the corners of wisdom. An active dialog that continued between mind, heart, fingers and the keys. Many iterations in mind and heart before the thoughts got imprinted. The sensory physical touch finalized the ink on the paper. No autocorrect. No text predictors. No aid from an algorithm to predict the next thought. The commitment between you, the ink and the paper- once final could not be erased.  No strong letters, no easy hate but yes strong thoughtful ideas.  

The physical body will soon disappear but the Qwerty keyboard will probably stay on. The design that was introduced to reduce fingers travel time across most commonly used words in that era. Do people still use the same set of words or the new generation has its own language. Should the new design not keep in sync with the time. But is the cost of switching now way too high? Familiarity passed through generations, the layout coded in your genes. Spirit stays, legacy continues, the physical form disappears.