My father was in the Signal Corps in WWII and operated a Telex machine. He said he could jam it at 80 words/minute! Wish I had that talent, I'm still one of the worse typists even after at least one half century of typing 
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That was I guess with all 10 fingers and thumbs i.e. touch typing.
These days most people are limited to typing using only 2 thumbs on their communications devices (i.e. mobiles/cellphones) 
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And an entire new 'language' of abbreviations and emoticons has developed! (of which I am NOT conversant)
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For a great laugh - watch this video of 2 teen boys trying to use a rotary phone!
Hilarious video show 17 year old teenagers baffled by rotary phone - YouTube
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Yup ..... I go back even further to computers with no hard drives ..... only floppies .... 1.5 to be exact ..... I was around but not into computers when the tape drives were popular ..... not until personal computers came into being ..... my very first computer was a Tandy Ex 1000 .....
The Tandy 1000 EX features a 5.25" floppy drive built into the right-hand side of computer casing. The EX sold for US$1,000 from Radio Shack in December 1986. The EX and, later, the HX were among the most popular of the Tandy 1000 line because of their low price.
A useful feature for the EX and later systems is the ability to boot off either drive, as the drives can be logically swapped when the system booted, so that the drive that was normally drive B: becomes drive A:, and vice versa, and the drives remain swapped until the system is powered off or reset. (The SX and TX have this capability as well.)
The 1000 EX comes with MS-DOS 2.11 and Personal Deskmate on 5.25" 360 KB diskettes. The MS-DOS is a version specialized for and only bootable on the Tandy 1000; it includes a version of BASICA (Microsoft's Advanced GW-BASIC) with support for the enhanced CGA graphics modes (a.k.a. Tandy Graphics or TGA) and three-voice sound hardware of the Tandy 1000.
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My first experience of Office Technology was one of these:
This was a 'wet photocopier' - you placed your original in an open ended pocket - clear front, white back, and fed it through the top slot - the dial went up to a maximum of 20 copies. Called a 'wet copier' because the copied sheet had raised ink on the sheet, not embedded in the paper like you would get on a printer or modern day MFD (Multi-Function Device), and the lease costs were expensive! Did you know that Xerox was the first manufacturer to produce a colour copier? They had to withdraw it from wide scale use as it was that good, somebody created a fake cheque book! Future colour copiers could only be used by giving an original colour document to a Xerox employee at a Copy centre! Wet copies meant that they could not be used for legal documents.
My first disastrous experience with 'new technology' in the workplace:
I hadn't been working long for a Catering company that provided meals at a prestigious Hall in the City where I live. The secretary would talk at me incessantly. She said it was my turn to swap the drives over. (As in the picture above). I did this (or so I thought) only to be told I had managed to wipe out 10,000 hours of data! I felt physically sick! Was told to leave the office and walk around for a few minutes. When I got back I did not have to tender my resignation as I had not wiped out data at all - I had just inserted the wrong disk having been talked at incessantly! Happy Days!
The company also had something like this:
The data cassettes were the equivalent of a 180 minute cassette which obviously did not exist in the Audio World. We were able to have used ones for personal use and I could use it successfully in Audio Cassette Recorder/Player!
Lastly, the company had one of these:
I was an Accounting Assistant at the time, but had studied typewriting at school but had not had the luxury of learning on one of these behemoth typewriters. I was working late and the company director had forgotten to submit a request for some menus to be prepared. I had to ring the typist what to do as you had to change the 'golfball' typeface for a different one for different parts of the menu, and was told to be extremely careful as each one cost hundreds of pounds!
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I did learn typing on one of those old upright 'behemoth' typewriters. I had also taken piano lesson so for me 'striking the keys' meant a good strong downward push. This long in place habit has been a problem for me on today's more touch sensitive keyboards. (rrreeeepppeatiiing letters anyone?)
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Bourne, I loved Stephenson's earlier books like Snow Crash and Diamond Age, but lost interest in his later books. William Gibson seems to have been likewise not having as much to offer now (though his Neuromancer was a GREAT book when it came out)?
I am curious always amazing things.
In internet you can found many things but what i seeing it dissapeird a history what it was when our foots coming on a earth.
Maybe I am weird but now everything mostly is on yt - example when you buying a product you get QR code or link how do that.
The time isn't the same.
Now when IA coming on the world. People don't talking together what is human nature. Everyone have a heads inside a mobile or another electronic tools like we start to beginning a half cyborg.
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Bourne, I too feel that humans have removed themselves way too far from the actual world that we live in. Cities have worlds that are human oriented ONLY. But I also have been seeing videos of people who are living more in concert with a natural world. My husband & I have lived 40 years with solar electricity (no grid source) as well as regenerating abused and less 'valuable' land into a lovely place to live - debt free too!
I also consider it sadly ironic that humans now have more 'tools' for communicating but actually interact meaningfully LESS.
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That is true reaction between two people is died with electronics.
That is nice you using ecology energy.
Reaction talking two people in real life somewhere is difficult to find.
Mostly people have mobile in a hand or listening music to cut from outside a world.
Some people my generation talking about a potato put in fire - then eatem them.
New generation don't know and don't have idea, how our life was more simplify. Without thousand rules from EU and winter was really nice.
Some people are in loop. Wake up, jobb, create a eating,shower, go somewhere.
Where is your creativity when you must always buying and when is broken buying new or go to service. Why not repairing myself?
I liked to understable how something working - Linus Torvalds gived us a nice egg where we can creating what kind chicken it will be. That is awesome.
I actually disagree with some of these sentiments.
It comes across too strongly of the all-too-human tendency to believe "my way is the better way."
Where do we draw the line between the "Actual" world and the "non-actual" one? Without a clear definition, then we are left with something shifting and arbitrary. Which is not a reliable metric.
To me, it is much like calling something human-made "artificial" and something formed without human interaction as "natural". As if there was somehow a difference between the two. Perhaps heralding back to the ancient days of humans where we believed we were Created By The Divine and have Dominion over the Earth.
Human made things are natural. They are anthropogenic, but just as much a part of the natural world. Humans are currently making Climate Change. But this, in itself, is nothing new. Plants, fungi and other animals have been doing the same for hundreds of millions of years. This does not excuse our carelessness (Especially as unlike blooming algae, we have the capacity to analyze the consequences of our behaviors). It simply does not allow that we are separate from the natural world.
I think Jain really narrowed down on the truest point:
We are naturally quite very selfish. Brazenly so.
If humanity truly wished to combat climate change, we would truly remove the polluters and the risks. We would remove the conveniences our transportation and energy demands place upon our lives. But we not only do not, we will not because the deep truth is we care more about being comfortable in this moment than we do about the future or future generations. We talk real big and loud about caring, but do not really care.
And this is the same across Rural Communities as it is across cities. It is the same from one country to the next. It is the natural way of Human Thinking. We evolved and developed to focus on our survival rather thoughtlessly. Because it simply worked for us for a hundred thousand years.
Humans simply cannot go feral. They cannot hunt or gather or live like our Australopithecus ancestors did. We cannot live "in concert with a natural world" because our progression is natural and is part of the natural world.
We do like the Beavers do - we just took it a little further. We alter our environment and create buildings and lodgings.
We do like the ants do. We farm. We raid. We form massive societies. We just do it a bit bigger.
How are human created societies any different from other animals that remove plant matter and burrow the rock when we at least plant trees in our concrete jungles?
Our digital age has its downsides. Greed. Huge energy draw. Pollution with radioactive and toxic elements. Yet, before we even had a glimmer of creativity, the "Natural World" had built a Nuclear Fission Reactor that ran unhindered for millions of years.
Our digital age has nurtured creativity and progress, helped us to find answers and solve mysteries, alleviate ignorance and allowed fast long distance sharing of information in ways undreamed of. It has its good, as well as the bad.
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Nikola Tesla changed a world but some people don't want a worl be better.
Example Bulb wolfram, they have on bulb what working and never died. They special meassue how died they to buying a new.
Next example Tights where the a constructo sell a patent they neve get a hole.
Propably the examples are more in this world but a money cannot gived a people a correct choices. Politics creating more rules and tax whee we simple people living on credit.
What about houses what can live together with nature. Ok. Some example dynamit was for good purpouse but was used on war. The examples are more and more. This is neverending history or journey.
do you mean digital piano ? i have one too.. i am sorta pianist.
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Aye. A little one to a $100 back thenn LOL. But as time fly by I bought a Yahama keyboard before I went for Roland.
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That's great.. Good to see a fellow piano lover.
