The Unabomber’s possessions are getting auctioned off. Among the storied objects on the block: his typewriter. I think I felt safer when this was a loonytoon’s weapon of choice, instead of email. At least you can see a typewriter. Or throw it across a room in self defense.
From Motherboard.tv:
Today, the U.S. Marshals office is selling some of his possessions through an online auction. “We will use the technology that Kaczynski railed against in his various manifestos to sell artifacts of his life,” said U.S. Marshal Albert Nájera of the Eastern District of California in a press release. “The proceeds will go to his victims and, in a very small way, offset some of the hardships they have suffered.”
This isn’t just weird in and of itself, the selling of the trappings of a serial killer at auction, iconic possessions that immediately present a kind of caricature of the lone madman (knife, check; hatchets, check; grey hoodie, check). The selling of these artifacts is an attempt to compensate the victims, but it’s also the sort of pseudo event the Unabomber would appreciate and ridicule. The effects being auctioned and trotted out for the media present a bizarre kind of restitution. They’re artifacts in an ongoing online Unabomber exhibit, one that will perpetuate the myth long after the man himself, now in a supermax prison in Colorado, passes away.
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From Motherboard.TV:
Everything is only the sum of its parts—but what are those parts? Most of the objects we live with are invisible to us. Hell, most of our own bodies aren’t even visible to us… I don’t plan on getting a good look at my own insides anytime soon. But I sure am thrilled to get intimate with the inner workings of some beautiful objects that were indispensable in the days before digital technology made everything (supposedly) better. Artist Todd McClellan took apart quotidian objects of yore and photographed them as part of his series, Disassembly. The prints are available as part of a limited edition from 20X200. In his artist’s statement, McClellan explains:
I photographed old items that are no longer used by the masses and often found on the street curbs heading for disposal. All of the pieces I photographed were in working order. I found it very interesting that they were all so well built and put together with screws, not glue. These pieces were all most likely put together by hand. I envisioned all the enjoyment these pieces had given many people for many years, all to be replaced by new technology that will itself be rapidly replaced with half the use.
If I take a hammer to this computer, will the result be this pretty? I will report back.
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Alex had a little crush on this still life that built itself by my desk in my office. This was my iPhone photo of it, filtered using instagram.
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ADIOS QWERTY?
Excellent New York Times piece by Virginia Heffernan on how the Qwerty keyboard may be on its way out
Among the 20th-century activities our muscles can’t forget is typing on a qwerty keyboard. And though most people who type now don’t know the meaning of a typebar jam — much less the inky aggravation — the configuration of characters that begins with the row q-w-e-r-t-y-u-i-o-p, first marketed for typewriters in 1874 to reduce such jams, is still the most common configuration in the world for English-language keyboards.
For 136 years, then, typing in English has meant making certain neurological associations. Words exist in our minds and on our tongues, but they also live in our hands and fingers. Anyone who types envisions and feels words in space, and for English speakers who use technology, this space is defined by the qwerty keyboard. Who knows what qwerty has done to the language — even to modes of thought — by attaching meaning to certain constellations? Deep in our typist-minds, G and H are centrally located and somehow siblings; X and Z are southwestern outliers; and Q is always followed by … W.
But maybe qwerty is finally on its way out. This will be good news to many designers who believe that bullheaded commitment to qwerty is holding up a revolution in interface design that should have started with the touch screen. The trusty layout still appears on nearly all English-language typewriters, computers and smartphones with hardware keyboards, but smartphones and tablet devices with touch-screen keypads (like the Android and the iPhone) now default to a layout that looks like qwerty but doesn’t work like qwerty at all.
Read More
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Dr. Scat, the Scat-o-phone, and Rolodexes
Am I the only one who has unread emails going back to forever? I say, “Oh, I’ll deal with that soon,” and then, you know, two iPhone OS’s later… Actually, I don’tknow how long it has been since the last OS, but that seems to be how people measure time these days. Just trying to stay hip, kiddies!
But what I was going to say is that I was finally going through old emails, and there were a bunch from some nice folks who read a piece I wrote about Rolodexes for Gizmodo some months ago. It then got picked up on MSNBC a couple of weeks ago. Apparently, MSNBCers are big into correspondence. How old school! Lots of good stories about Rolodexes in my inbox now. I’ll try to share some of them here soon.
One woman, Laurie Chapple of Louisiana Office Supply Co in Baton Rouge, LA, wrote:
One by one, we have been seeing items going obsolete in the office products industry. However, the elderly still call and ask for discontinued/dying items such as:
List finders – like a rolodex, but in a flat “dial” a letter format.
Kor rec type – pre-correcting sellectric typewriter - when I worked summers in the 70’s, we shipped them out by the case load.
Carbon Paper – Still has good uses when you are away from a computer
Dr Scat – originally made for cleaning typewriter platens (the rolling pen part), but great for getting adhesive off glass.
I’d heard of all of these but the last one. After some super intensive research (I had to go through at least three pages of Google results) I found this photo by
shanksie on Flickr:
The left bottle is noted: “Scat-o-phone: Keep your telephone fresh clean and healthful. Wipe a few drops on the mouthpiece. Your phone is sanitary and deodorized.”
Smells like a combination of rubbing alcohol and perfume.
The right: “Cleaner for typewriter, rubber platen roll and type.”
A Christmas window at Viktor & Rolf Bijenkorf in Amsterdam. It’s for typing really big important things. Like, really big. Really really big. But first you have to get over your really really big case of writers’ block.
(via dustybe)
Nina Jua Klein’s typewriter recordings:
“A project based on an early childhood memory of my father writing his articles on a typewriter. The sound of each article on page 1 of the Sueddeutsche Zeitung typed on a
typewriter is recorded on a cassette recorder, then translated into a digital file. The sound is played back on an iPod, presented alongside a typewritten sheet of paper and a cassette:
the relics of processes that have become redundant in the digital age.”
