Right on the mark. Ever since last summer I have done more writing intentionally without the use of a PC. Like before I had one. Then like many I fell into everything on a computer. Well I have yet to find and use a word processing program that will correct the wrong word spelled correctly. As in I ‘one the prize’ and every processor will pass it; even some grammar checkers. It may be a poor example, but a few weeks ago I even noticed a magazine article title that was correctly spelled, but with the wrong word. It happens often. Writing by hand or with a typewriter forces one to use correct spelling and grammar.
This is very well stated and the airplane analogy works well.
My daughter was telling me recently about a teen dystopian novel (she reads a lot of these) in which people are not taught to write by hand — they only keyboard on computers, and they’re required to use various stock phrases. Dystopia indeed.
I’ve got to learn how you create links from your typecasts.
The Airbus analogy is depressingly accurate and prevalent. Computer technology offers many advantages, but to rely on it for critical matters (financial, emergency communications, control of the infrastructure, even ALL entertainment) without backup systems is foolish and sometimes deadly. Worse, people and organizations lose the knowledge/skill to function in an emergency when computers aren’t available. They act as if the technology won’t, and cannot, fail. Such faith is touching in a three year old child. It is inexcusable for any adult where the consequences, whether personal or societal, can be inconvenient at best and critical at worst.
Hmmm! This gives me an idea for an essay. It will be written on a 1939 Royal KMM.
The danger with an overreliance on computers, as I see it, is that, unlike analog tools, they have the ability to encase us in virtual reality. Pilots don’t fly the planes, they fly the computers. One way to think about modern airliners is that they are designed to be giant airborne flight simulators. The fact that they work 99% of the time means that they’re pretty darn good flight simulators, for sure, but they are still designed to run Mother Nature through algorithmic filters and feed the resulting solutions to pilots.
I hope this didn’t come across as an anti-tech rant. Like I said, I really like computers, particuarly the ones that fall from the Apple tree. But I think there are a lot of unexamined consequences to our headlong rush to the virtual. If the Singularity ever comes, I’ll be taking to the hills with the partisans, bringing nothing but a typewriter and a pack of Gauloises.
@Richard, I use image maps for links. I create the maps in an HTML editor (Taco is my favorite) and copy the code into the blog post. Then in the img links, I add the tag usemap=”#[mapname]” . You should be able to see the coding if you do View Source on the post.
Writers benefit from computers because they’re labor-saving devices; you don’t have to retype the whole second draft to change one paragraph on each page, and the last draft is already in a format suited for distribution (well, mostly).
I will agree that all those other goodies — grammar checkers, readability software, structured writing tools, etc. — probably do more harm than good, especially when writers are venturing off a little bit into the unknown (provided the software doesn’t wholly prevent it).
I have no interest in writing professionally on a typewriter, but I’d suggest I am writing in the digital equivalent of a typewriter-ish environment.
Your average programmer’s text editor lacks all the “writer’s tools” mentioned above save the spell check, yet it excels at the things that help you manipulate plain text (power search, snippets, on-demand adaptive autocomplete, ungodly text manipulation tools, a complete lack of formatting distractions, etc).
Hell, I’ve even devolved to using monospaced fonts (easier to detect spelling/spacing errors).
I don’t disagree with your basic premise that a lot of “writer’s tools” actually harm the writing process, but instead of going analog, I avoided the tool trap by sidestepping my way into a programmer’s tool, which isn’t meant for writers and therefore isn’t equipped with all the attendant toys (and issues). It doesn’t do any of the driving for me, yet when I grab the stick, things tend to happen pretty quickly.
As for the airline crash report, it was chilling; the jig was pretty clearly up when the co-pilot essentially abdicated responsibility in favor of a captain who wasn’t even on the deck, as if he was going to figure it all out in a few seconds.
Thank goodness all my international, over-ocean flights are behind me for a while.
Oh, certainly no argument about their labor-saving capabilities. It’s their thought-saving capabilities of which I am wary (and it sounds like you are too).
About a decade ago during an extended power outage, I had to bang out several articles on a manual by the light of an oil lamp (really). On the one hand, it really brought home to me how insanely luxurious the writing process is with a computer. For serious heavy lifting, there is just no comparison.
On the other hand, I found that my level of engagement with the words was much greater. I discovered that I had to do my thinking *before* hitting the keys, not *after.* That was a revelation to me, and humbling.
To continue the airplane analogy, your programmer’s tool sounds like a P-51 Mustang! I have read your posts on the subject and I’ve been considering trying one, but I haven’t yet. Can you recommend a good tool for Apple? BBEdit, perhaps?
I discovered that I had to do my thinking before hitting the keys, not after.
I wrote my first copywriting projects on an electric typewriter (I wasn’t man enough for a manual), and even when I moved to my first computer, I couldn’t afford the printer for quite some time.
As a result, I tended to concept, thumbnail, write and rewrite my copy in notebooks before typing it, which I considered a final step. I believe I still pre-plan my commercial work far more than your average copywriter, though I’ve adopted the “fire hose” approach for my blog posts, which I’d suggest are less focused.
All of which tends to support what you’re saying.
Which leaves us looking for a way to have the cake without gaining the weight.
Enter the powerful-yet-stripped-down text editor.
I’m definitely biased towards mutli-platform editors (and I’m using Linux), so I haven’t seen the current incarnation of BBEdit.
I’ve settled down with three (one of the beauties of using text files is they’re no more proprietary than a piece of typing paper). I’ll often have two open at once, and actually switch between them for different jobs.
That said, Sublime Text is settling in as a favorite. It’s very fast, very clean, and looks/works almost identically across Linux, Mac & Windoze. Also offers a distraction-free mode. The downside is that it’s a programmer’s editor, so there’s a learning curve.
A real upside is the active community which is developing extensions, one of which is called Markdown to Clipboard, which allows me to write everything in the Markdown text markup language, yet have it converted to HTML when I copy it to the clipboard. Handy.
Other contenders are Komodo Edit and Emacs, the latter of which is truly powerful, and truly beyond the reach of most mortals (like me).
Right on the mark. Ever since last summer I have done more writing intentionally without the use of a PC. Like before I had one. Then like many I fell into everything on a computer. Well I have yet to find and use a word processing program that will correct the wrong word spelled correctly. As in I ‘one the prize’ and every processor will pass it; even some grammar checkers. It may be a poor example, but a few weeks ago I even noticed a magazine article title that was correctly spelled, but with the wrong word. It happens often. Writing by hand or with a typewriter forces one to use correct spelling and grammar.
WTFW FTW!
This is very well stated and the airplane analogy works well.
My daughter was telling me recently about a teen dystopian novel (she reads a lot of these) in which people are not taught to write by hand — they only keyboard on computers, and they’re required to use various stock phrases. Dystopia indeed.
I’ve got to learn how you create links from your typecasts.
The Airbus analogy is depressingly accurate and prevalent. Computer technology offers many advantages, but to rely on it for critical matters (financial, emergency communications, control of the infrastructure, even ALL entertainment) without backup systems is foolish and sometimes deadly. Worse, people and organizations lose the knowledge/skill to function in an emergency when computers aren’t available. They act as if the technology won’t, and cannot, fail. Such faith is touching in a three year old child. It is inexcusable for any adult where the consequences, whether personal or societal, can be inconvenient at best and critical at worst.
Hmmm! This gives me an idea for an essay. It will be written on a 1939 Royal KMM.
The danger with an overreliance on computers, as I see it, is that, unlike analog tools, they have the ability to encase us in virtual reality. Pilots don’t fly the planes, they fly the computers. One way to think about modern airliners is that they are designed to be giant airborne flight simulators. The fact that they work 99% of the time means that they’re pretty darn good flight simulators, for sure, but they are still designed to run Mother Nature through algorithmic filters and feed the resulting solutions to pilots.
I hope this didn’t come across as an anti-tech rant. Like I said, I really like computers, particuarly the ones that fall from the Apple tree. But I think there are a lot of unexamined consequences to our headlong rush to the virtual. If the Singularity ever comes, I’ll be taking to the hills with the partisans, bringing nothing but a typewriter and a pack of Gauloises.
@Richard, I use image maps for links. I create the maps in an HTML editor (Taco is my favorite) and copy the code into the blog post. Then in the img links, I add the tag usemap=”#[mapname]” . You should be able to see the coding if you do View Source on the post.
I have to disagree, if ever so slightly.
Writers benefit from computers because they’re labor-saving devices; you don’t have to retype the whole second draft to change one paragraph on each page, and the last draft is already in a format suited for distribution (well, mostly).
I will agree that all those other goodies — grammar checkers, readability software, structured writing tools, etc. — probably do more harm than good, especially when writers are venturing off a little bit into the unknown (provided the software doesn’t wholly prevent it).
I have no interest in writing professionally on a typewriter, but I’d suggest I am writing in the digital equivalent of a typewriter-ish environment.
Your average programmer’s text editor lacks all the “writer’s tools” mentioned above save the spell check, yet it excels at the things that help you manipulate plain text (power search, snippets, on-demand adaptive autocomplete, ungodly text manipulation tools, a complete lack of formatting distractions, etc).
Hell, I’ve even devolved to using monospaced fonts (easier to detect spelling/spacing errors).
I don’t disagree with your basic premise that a lot of “writer’s tools” actually harm the writing process, but instead of going analog, I avoided the tool trap by sidestepping my way into a programmer’s tool, which isn’t meant for writers and therefore isn’t equipped with all the attendant toys (and issues). It doesn’t do any of the driving for me, yet when I grab the stick, things tend to happen pretty quickly.
As for the airline crash report, it was chilling; the jig was pretty clearly up when the co-pilot essentially abdicated responsibility in favor of a captain who wasn’t even on the deck, as if he was going to figure it all out in a few seconds.
Thank goodness all my international, over-ocean flights are behind me for a while.
TC
Oh, certainly no argument about their labor-saving capabilities. It’s their thought-saving capabilities of which I am wary (and it sounds like you are too).
About a decade ago during an extended power outage, I had to bang out several articles on a manual by the light of an oil lamp (really). On the one hand, it really brought home to me how insanely luxurious the writing process is with a computer. For serious heavy lifting, there is just no comparison.
On the other hand, I found that my level of engagement with the words was much greater. I discovered that I had to do my thinking *before* hitting the keys, not *after.* That was a revelation to me, and humbling.
To continue the airplane analogy, your programmer’s tool sounds like a P-51 Mustang! I have read your posts on the subject and I’ve been considering trying one, but I haven’t yet. Can you recommend a good tool for Apple? BBEdit, perhaps?
I wrote my first copywriting projects on an electric typewriter (I wasn’t man enough for a manual), and even when I moved to my first computer, I couldn’t afford the printer for quite some time.
As a result, I tended to concept, thumbnail, write and rewrite my copy in notebooks before typing it, which I considered a final step. I believe I still pre-plan my commercial work far more than your average copywriter, though I’ve adopted the “fire hose” approach for my blog posts, which I’d suggest are less focused.
All of which tends to support what you’re saying.
Which leaves us looking for a way to have the cake without gaining the weight.
Enter the powerful-yet-stripped-down text editor.
I’m definitely biased towards mutli-platform editors (and I’m using Linux), so I haven’t seen the current incarnation of BBEdit.
I’ve settled down with three (one of the beauties of using text files is they’re no more proprietary than a piece of typing paper). I’ll often have two open at once, and actually switch between them for different jobs.
That said, Sublime Text is settling in as a favorite. It’s very fast, very clean, and looks/works almost identically across Linux, Mac & Windoze. Also offers a distraction-free mode. The downside is that it’s a programmer’s editor, so there’s a learning curve.
A real upside is the active community which is developing extensions, one of which is called Markdown to Clipboard, which allows me to write everything in the Markdown text markup language, yet have it converted to HTML when I copy it to the clipboard. Handy.
Other contenders are Komodo Edit and Emacs, the latter of which is truly powerful, and truly beyond the reach of most mortals (like me).
[…] freight like you and me from one airport to another every day, and if the pilot knows how to FTFA, then the plane works. It’s […]