Tympanic- There is something sensual about the clickity clack of a typewriter. It is rhythmic and real and hits me like a drum beat or rain on a window the way a click of a keyboard cannot do. They are different. The typewriter is the definitive sound of work and production where a keyboard seems ethereal, a hushed key stroke that doesn’t want to disturb the work. A typewriter is a machine that records work and thoughts already made; the keyboard waits for work and ideas to be created.
This experience was great, mistakes and all! It really made me aware of the keys and finger placement. I became much more aware of this interface and how carefully we had to type. The machine really became center stage in this TP, and a true partnership twixt human and machine was forged. The simulator wouldn’t let me scroll down to the end of the page, though, so I was typing blind. These short excerpts took me several tries before I typed a few lines without a mistake. Once I did make a mistake, I just left it because the thought of typing this over yet again was painful (much like my students who don’t want to proofread emails or text messages). During the TP, we couldn’t figure out how to make the simulator manipulate the letters to swirl and bend, but later we did and I tried my hand at it (literally). Typing in a linear fashion without making mistakes was difficult enough, but trying to remember the keystrokes and manipulate the letters and not make mistakes was excruciatingly slow and frustrating and yet, still FUN! Again combining so many of the senses- touch, sight, and sound.
It brought me back to high school typing class days! I remember typing drills to see how many words per minute we could type without any errors. Before I was hired for my first summer job as a data-entry clerk, I had to take a typing test and score at least 100 wpm with only one mistake. I barely passed. Now my fingers know the muscle memory for the backspace key almost better than they do for the qwerty keys.
