India - The land where the typewriter still lives and thrives

[onetrack]

Here's an interesting BBC article about how the manual typewriter still survives and thrives in India. It not only survives, it is often still a treasured possession - and there are still sizeable numbers of Indian people training in manual typewriter use.

It makes a lot of sense in a country where electric power supply is often erratic, and where paper documents still rule, as against electronic recording and storage.

 

Even a number of my older friends (yes, I actually have 4 or 5) are still convinced that converting the whole of our society to electronic recording, databases, and computer technology is a step too far, and one day it will all come crashing down, and it all evaporate into the ether, in an instant. They may be right. It could have happened in a previous age, and who today, would know? There would be nothing left of a wholly electronic society for the archaeologists and paleontologists to find.

 

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210928-indias-nostalgic-passion-for-old-typewriters?utm_source=mozilla_newsbeat&utm_medium=email

[spacesailor]

I always put my P C , files onto R W disks so when ANOTHER computer bites the dust, my t.reasured photo,s and docs, are there for the replacement P C.

My old'r' laptop had ' dual layer ' capacity writing. The new'r' P C  has only single layer.

So have to sort .those files into 4 .7 g , blocks to fit the smaller disk.

spacesailor

[Dax]

1 hour ago, onetrack said:

Even a number of my older friends (yes, I actually have 4 or 5) are still convinced that converting the whole of our society to electronic recording, databases, and computer technology is a step too far, and one day it will all come crashing down, and it all evaporate into the ether, in an instant.

It will happen, the timing is the big thing and if there happens to be some from of nuclear war, then the associated EMF's will wipe out every server within the shock area. We still have paper copies of most things, keep telling others involved that the day will come when there is no power and the business has to be ready for it.

 

23 minutes ago, spacesailor said:

I always put my P C , files onto R W disks so when ANOTHER computer bites the dust, my t.reasured photo,s and docs, are there for the replacement P C.

In linux, you can make a clone of your system so if it crashes or the computer fails, you just put in the disc and load the entire system without losing anything. Have a number of hard discs which store the same stuff, have discovered over time HDD, SSD and cd/dvd deteriorates and you can lose lots of stuff. Still have a large collection of vinyl and if I ever buy recorded music try to get vinyl, it seems to be back in vogue.

 

My son in law is into vinyl and he always goes through my albums, looking for things he hasn't heard, which is most of my collection as it contains loads of music that never got very far, but is really cool. He drools over my beatles collection of un played 1st releases and a couple of masters, keeps telling me to sell them, but told him waiting for them to be worth $1 million, which will never happen.

 

Typewriters helped me learn to communicate, my hand writing is the pits and even I have trouble reading what I write, so would have t print my words and even then it's still crap. When I got my hands on a little typewriter at a tip and was able to get it going, my world changed. With a dictionary beside me, could actually write stuff that made sense.

Edited October 2, 2021 by Dax

[red750]

1 hour ago, spacesailor said:

I always put my P C , files onto R W disks so when ANOTHER computer bites the dust, my t.reasured photo,s and docs, are there for the replacement P C.

You won't want a newer laptop then Spacey, they don't have disk drives. You need USB sticks or external hard disks. I use  2gb external drive with all my photos, including those on the Aircraft showcase, together with all my other files. Go to another computer, plug it in the USB socket and away you go. Just like home.

[old man emu]

3 hours ago, onetrack said:

converting the whole of our society to electronic recording, databases, and computer technology is a step too far, and one day it will all come crashing down, and it all evaporate into the ether, in an instant.

Remember years ago when computers were the newest thing that everyone was touting the idea of a "paperless" office. Seems that during this interim period between the working life of Old Timers fading out and the Digital Age kids taking over that the amount of paper used increased markedly.

 

There is the problem of where is all the stuff "in the Cloud" located. We know it sits on servers, but where are these? What if the country where the server farms are went to war with us and denied us access to the servers? What about very long term storage of documents? You can see how, in the past 25 years or so, more people have been able to access original documents in State Archives, so that our knowledge of what happened in the past, be it the granting of a Charter for a town to have a market, or the details in a patent application for an idea, is better than it ever was. But if from now on, were rely wholly on digital means to store our history as we make it, what would indeed happen if the access to those records was lost?

[octave]

I backup my pc regularly both in the cloud (one drive) and on my external drive.  The thing to remember about the cloud it is great for backup but I certainly  would also  keep local copies..   The advantage of cloud storage is that if you business or home burns down and you lose you locally stored data or paperwork, an off site copy still exits.  At the moment I am going through the painstaking task of scanning all of my old photos.   Many of these photos have become drab and faded over the years.      

[old man emu]

3 hours ago, octave said:

Many of these photos have become drab and faded over the years. 

Red has just the program for you!