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> ... and typewriters still aren't obsolete! I guess I'm living in a particular professional niche but I haven't seen a typewriter in ages. Let alone seen anyo
by ginko 1y ago
> ... and typewriters still aren't obsolete!
I guess I'm living in a particular professional niche but I haven't seen a typewriter in ages. Let alone seen anyone using one.
- loloquwowndueo 1y agoI have not seen a physical fax machine in over a decade; haven’t sent a fax in at least 4 years. Yet they are still around and not obsolete.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y agoGo to a doctor's office. They live there.
- jrajav 1y agoWhat then should we call technologies that have multiple significantly lower cost, more versatile, more ubiquitous, and more interoperable alternatives available?
- loeg 1y agoThey're still around and obsolete. They continue to exist solely due to regulatory capture in the healthcare industry.
- ghaff 1y agoMy local hospital system was bought by one of the big city systems. I think quite a few of the older docs basically quit because of dealing with the newer electronic health records system. The younger docs seem OK with it. Never seen anyone use a typewriter. As a patient much better. No more faxing lab work to the lab and it's back in hours.
- kevin_thibedeau 1y agoIt's because faxed signatures have legal recognition and nothing electronic does.
- Legend2440 1y agoThat's not true, digital signatures have been legally valid since 2000. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Signatures_in_Global_and_National_Commerce_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Signatures_in_Globa...
- zabzonk 1y agoYep, the last HP LaserJet Color printer I bought came with fax. I must admit, I kind of wondered why.
- drob518 1y agoSo they could charge you more money for the increase in “value” embodied in the product. (sarc)
- zabzonk 1y agoPossibly. But I really like their more up-market color laser printers. They have always worked flawlessly for me. Their inkjets (and everyone else's inkjets) on the other hand ...
- jdougan 1y agoI'd call them obsolescent, not obsolete.
- paxys 1y agoPlenty of businesses and governments in the USA still only accept documents via fax. So fax machines and fax services will continue to exist just to service them. I don't think there's a single business that requires you to hand in typewritten documents.
- zaphirplane 1y agoI am going to guess that most fax machines are not dedicated machines but a part of combination of printer scanner fax. It wouldn’t be obvious
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- ben_w 1y agoLast time I saw one (working and in real life, rather than TV or a museum) was the late 80s or early 90s. And even then, it was in a second-hand charity sale.
- tempodox 1y agoTypewriters typically are not connected to the internet. I.e. nobody can hack them, remotely sabotage them, or hoover up every word you type. It's not completely outside the realm of possibility that we'll come to appreciate those features again within our lifetimes.
- tptacek 1y agoNeither is a computer without a network connection.
- throwanem 1y agoFortunately, espionage wasn't invented until after the typewriter's obsolescence - certainly no one has ever used a typewriter in the pursuit of espionage before! - and intelligence agencies the world over thus would be forced to respond from a standing start.
- opless 1y agoHuh? It was fairly common for typewriter ribbons to be destroyed where confidential information was typed, as it was possible to acquire previously typed characters.
- throwanem 1y agoObviously. But how obviously to someone who assumes anything without an Internet connection is constitutionally unsurveillable thereby? How does it occur to you to destroy a ribbon, or consider all the other methods by which a sufficiently motivated adversary will defeat your toy air gap, if you believe your air gap isn't a toy? Of course we are deep into the realm of movie plots already, where we've fantasized a superstate-or superhuman-level adversary still somehow capable of being defeated by "going crude." But if that's where we're going to hang out, why half-ass it?
- II2II 1y agoI realize that your /s key is broken, but ... ... you would be shocked by how much could be surveilled back then. Pretty much any voice communicated were sent in the clear. It didn't much matter whether it was sent over wire or over the air. Snail mail was virtually always sent as clear text. Even digital communications were rarely encrypted. Even ignoring the legality of it, few people had the creativity to envision a world of secure communications or wanted to expend their (limited) computing power on it. There were, of course, exceptions like the military.
- teeray 1y agoI’ve seen a lot of “distraction-free” writing apps up to even e-ink screens glued to mechanical keyboards. There’s still plenty of typewriters out there—they’re just paper-free now.
- jethro_tell 1y agoThat’s not a typewriter no matter how much you’d want to make that connection.
- alexjplant 1y agoThey are but they aren't. Excepting niche cases (like filling out carbons in triplicate at car dealerships and such) typewriters are pretty anachronistic. It is, however, amusing that over the past decade as things have digitized fewer people seem to own printers. Without a printer a computer fails at the simple task that a typewriter is inherently designed for - putting words to paper. Anecdotally <50% of my friends have a printer in their home... I wonder how that compares to typewriter ownership 50 years ago? Regardless it's pretty clear that the author of the site is a big typewriter fan hence their statement. I find it contrived, but hey, it takes all kinds to make the world go 'round.
- KerrAvon 1y agoObsolete doesn't mean useless. Typewriters are obsolete! I use a lot of things that are obsolete, but that doesn't make them not obsolete.
- anyfoo 1y agoIndeed I use my printer once every two months or so, as a very rough estimate. And then it’s usually for myself rather than for someone or something else. For example I sometimes (not always) like printing out papers to read them “offline”, or diagrams when I want to take notes on them. I don’t miss dealing with paper because I had to.
- int_19h 1y agoOwnership of printers is so low because the usefulness of putting words to paper is correspondingly low these days, though, because so many things are online or at least digital. 20-30 years ago though printers were far more common than typewriters before them.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]