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Typewriters, Computers, and Creating?
saddleupsancho writes "Today's NY Times reports that Cormac McCarthy is auctioning the 45-year-old Olivetti manual typewriter on which all his novels, screenplays, plays, short stories, and much of his correspondence were written, to benefit the Sante Fe Institute where he is a Research Fellow. What would happen decades from now if, say, Richard Powers or Neal Stephenson attempted to auction their desktops or laptops? Setting aside completely any comparison among the three authors, is there something more intrinsically interesting and valuable, less ephemeral and interchangeable, about a typewriter vs. a computer as an instrument of literary creation? Or is the current generation just as sentimental about their computer-based devices as McCarthy's generation is about his Olivetti? Would you offer as much for McCarthy's input device if it were a generic PC, Mac, or Linux box as you would for his Olivetti?"
It's Santa Fe, not "Sante" Fe! Here in Santa Fe, we mock idiots who can't type properly, but that commonplace error is beyond my understanding... The letters "a" and "e" aren't even next to each other on a qwerty keyboard, so I can't figure out why that error occurs at least one out of 20 times when someone types "Santa Fe". I must see it once a day... credit card receipts from the ultra-crappy Best Buy here have stated "Sante Fe" since they opened -- eight years ago!