Thinking again about the essay in OP, for whomever is still reading this, I'm reminded of Patrick Farley's The Guy I Almost Was, in which the protagonist buys a

Thinking again about the essay in OP, for whomever is still reading this, I'm reminded of Patrick Farley's The Guy I Almost Was, in which the protagonist buys a Hermes 3000 manual typewriter instead of a computer to rebel against the self-serving consumerist futurism he used to embrace (and also, incidentally, because he cannot afford a computer). In short, the typewriter was a component of a form of cosplay, the garb of the sort of beat-generation intellectual with the sort of authenticity he aspired to have. (I'm convinced that fellow Hermes user William Gibson has spent a career cosplaying as a beat poet, which is why his fiction has an urticating effect on me.) As it happens, I also own a Hermes 3000 typewriter. I bought it for a different reason: because it's really, really cool. Like all of the modern, sophisticated computers I own, it's a fascinating piece of information technology, precision engineered to do what it does very well. There's a minimalism about it I admire: it's a machine for augmenting the writing process that doesn't even need electricity. So again, some people use certain tools because those tools are simply a joy to use. And that's fine too.