The story that killed the typewriter

WE SUFFERED A SAD loss this week, with people pausing to remember and praise a loved one who had succumbed to the fate that awaits us all: the humble, functional, nearly forgotten old typewriter is no more. An Indian manufacturer, Godrej Boyce, had ceased production, and only a few hundred models remained.

The news prompted countless essays relating fond memories of clacking keys and dinging carriage returns. The phrase “RIP Typewriter” has been all the buzz on Twitter and Facebook for days. On NBC news, in the US, its anchor Brian Williams, who looks so old-school that he might actually still use a typewriter, delivered a brief obituary, with the words, “The Typewriter 1867-2011” written behind him. It was, in many ways, a rather touching outpouring of emotion. For whom the margin bell tolls and all that.

Except, as Mark Twain's Remington might have typed it, this was one rumoured death that was greatly exaggerated. An article in the Daily Mailabout the closure of Godrej Boyce was titled, without much room for ambiguity, "The end of the line: last typewriter factory left in the world closes its doors."

A blog on the website of the Atlanticmagazine linked to the Mailstory, and from there it spread across blogs faster than a 1930s secretary could dash off a dictated letter. But this was about as erroneous a death notice as you could imagine: there are still quite a few typewriter manufacturers, making both electronic and manual models. And Godrej Boyce actually closed its factory in 2009; it's just down to the final few hundred models for sale.

The entire saga was like an obituary that accidentally gets published prematurely, or those bizarre rumours of celebrity deaths that spread occasionally. The typewriter might be a technological dinosaur, but it’s far from extinct.

So what does the reaction to the story say about us? Why the wave of wistful mourning for a product that was usurped decades ago? How can so many express sadness for the demise of a product they probably haven’t used in years?

The incident perfectly illustrates the nostalgia we are so keen to wallow in: this was a very specific instance of the things-were- better-back-in-my-day syndrome.

It need hardly be said that it’s a very shallow, insincere nostalgia – none of the tweeters expressing sadness is likely to rush out and buy a typewriter now it’s clear they’re easily available. But the sentimental posturing is even more affected than that: I’d wager many of the people mourning the death of the typewriter never even used one.

I’m not exactly a digital native myself, but even I never had to align a page, hit a carriage return or replace a frayed ribbon. All typewriters gave me was the Qwerty keyboard layout. And although touch screens don’t offer the satisfying tactile or auditory feedback of a clunky typewriter keyboard, I know which I’d rather carry in my backpack.

Most of these expressions of sadness were an attempt to establish some retro-Luddite credibility, even if the 140 characters were most likely composed on a little computer that fits in your pocket. The tone of some of the reactions was decidedly anti-tech, essentially claiming that nefarious technology had claimed another victim, like a serial killer working through a list of targets, from the eight-track and cassette tape to the Polaroid and Kodachrome. New technology can be revolutionary and desirable, but it can never have that air of patinated, genuine cool.

There’s nothing wrong with nostalgia, but there is a sense it is being exacerbated by the ever-increasing pace of technological innovation and ever-hastening obsolescence. In that sense the typewriter is this week acting as a symbol of pre-digital stability, of an earlier time when the devices around us were those that our parents and grandparents used, and when social norms seemed similarly immutable. It’s nonsense but comforting all the same.

But what’s going to happen when the typewriter actually does die, when the final key is placed on the final keyboard, the final ribbon affixed with ink? Will there be a similarly emotional outpouring or is this like the boy who cried wolf? “The typewriter?” we’ll all tweet to one another dismissively. “I thought that was dead already.”

Shane Hegarty returns next week