On Wed, 17 Dec 2014 21:37:55 -0800 (PST), bob_villa
wrote:

On Wednesday, December 17, 2014 10:22:18 AM UTC-6, songbird wrote:

i flunked typing in Jr. High, (manual typewriters, ugh!)
yet by the time i was through the second year of college i'd
used four different keyboards.

I remember typing class...all Remington manual typewriters...by 1 month
most of the girls could type 30 w/m and most guys took 3 months! (1962)

I remember those old typewriters, and they took a lot more finger power
to work them keys. I took typing class, and never could get the hang of
using all of my fingers as instructed. Worst of all was the lack of
DELETE or BACKSPACE keys. Half my page was "whiteout" when I was done.
That was in the early to mid 1960's for me too.

All the expectations of "proper" typing left me with a bad taste
regarding typing. But in the 80's I kept needing to have things
submitted in a typed format. That either meant typing it on a manual
typewriter, using a lot of whiteout, and making a photo copy to actually
submit, or paying someone else to type it. Eventually I bought an
electronic typewriter (Word Processor). It would hold about four or
five typed pages in memory, and errors could be fixed before printing.
To me, that seemed like the greatest thing ever.

A few years later, I bought my first computer, which used the old 5 1/4
floppy disks, and had a black and amber monitor. Having the ability to
save what I typed on a disk, and be able to print it again at a later
date seemed to be a whole new world. Plus those early computers could
do spreadsheets, which I never really needed, but I had to play around
with them. Those early computers were not much more than glorified
electronic typewriters, but still a huge improvement over the old manual
typewriters.

The computers of today, are a whole different world. They can still do
word processing and spreadsheets, but so much more. ANd even do so with
full color screens, versus the old black and white (or amber) monitors,
or later on the black, white, magenta, and cyan monitors. (3 color, and
damn ugly).

I still remember the old BBS modem connections, when you could connect
with someone else in your area, chat, share a few really ugly pictures,
and download some Dos based shareware app. Then came the internet..
Websites, Usenet, Email, and a few other things which are no longer
used.

In my opinion, the older internet was a lot more fun and useful than it
is today. Most young people dont even know what a newsgroup is, but
they are all addicted to that worthless mass of junk called "Facebook".

But that seems to be the way with all technology. We dreamed to have
"COLOR TV". We finally got it, and then HDTV. Now we have the
"perfect" picture, but the tv programming is trash. And we have
computers that can do almost anything, but they are mostly used for
trash and flooded with more trash advertising and malware.

The times they are a changing. But in some ways, I'd rather go back to
better days. Just NOT a manual typewriter!