Here at the office we have all sorts of high tech gadgets. I do my work on a G5 that silently sits on my desk top. Sometimes I wish it whirred, it gets kind of quiet in the newsroom. Weird, I know, you’d expect it to be people yelling over eachother’s desks, answering phones and being busy, but it’s actually more like a newspaper reading room at a large library. Except you can drink coffee.
We even have highly technological automatic hand sensing antibacterial gel sprayers. You hold your hands underneath and a big gloppy spurt of heavily alcoholic hand sanitizer comes out. And yet, even with these ‘advances’ there are still throw backs to what used to be.
Every so often, I will hear the jangling ring of a rotary phone. Yes, it is an actual rotary and not someone’s goofy MP3 ring tone. The other day my box found a box of wood encased tape erasers and old radio alarm clocks. I even discovered a huge box of film, from the by gone eras when we used to have a dark room and actual prints to deal with.
I haven’t seen a typewriter around yet, but desperately want one to clack upon when it gets slow. It lends an air of reality to this highly electronic world.