Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Hard Return

I have admitted, both publicly and in this murky and uninviting corner of the ubernet, that I get some satisfaction from reviving old technologies. When the new-old car arrived with a cassette tape deck, I rejoiced. When I discovered a really solid AM radio station, I exulted. When I gave up the gym with its plug-in and cable-counterweighted machines for calisthenics on the cold floor, a heavy dumbbell and an over-door pull-up bar, my only real regret was not having enough time to take full advantage of any of it. Old school is fine by me. So, I’m a little conflicted by my antipathy toward the exhumed Olivetti. On one hand, it rouses a grudging sense of guilt within my breast. On the other hand, it’s so lame that I just don’t care. Apathy, antipathy. Neither is what I’d like to be feeling, but one can’t deny one’s heart.

When I first got to the office where I’ve now labored eight years, I was assigned a desk, a chair, and a computer. Our standard word processing program was an obsolete platform once favored by lawyers but even by then lusterless and clunky. We began a switch to the general industry standard, and then a few years ago, upgraded to a less-outdated version. In all that time we’ve moved steadily , if sluggishly, forward into the bright dawn of office technology.  In deference to the improved efficacy thereof, I have not complained. (Much.)

In tandem with enhanced software, we’ve also implemented new hardware to facilitate its use. CPUs have gotten smaller and faster, and monitors are larger, lighter and brighter. Chairs that once cheerfully bent spines into aching rigidity have been replaced with new models that adjust into an infinite number of ergonomically- appropriate postures. Photocopiers now scan and manipulate images, and regular old printers are now regular new printers that produce color, multiples, and even envelopes with minimal effort.

It’s this last bit that has put me at odds with my affinity for obsolete tech. Envelopes were once the only thing our printers couldn’t reliably do. The envelope tray was loose and shiftless, and tended to slurp up multiples when it slurped up anything at all. Envelopes often printed askew or emerged wrinkled and looking sorry for themselves. I was sorry for them, too. They deserved a better fate than printer-driven mutilation, which wasn’t even convenient to achieve, what with our single networked printer way off on the other side of the bullpen. For envelopes, the printer was a disfavored option. But what alternatives were left to me? My handwriting is unfit for business purposes. If I wanted an envelope back when I first got to my place of employment, I was supposed to Olivetti it.

The Olivetti was - is - a behemoth, just slightly smaller than a Fiat 500 but considerably less sporty. It dates from the era when typewriters sought to compete with computers, still possessed of advantages of crispness and speed when used by skilled hands. But in the ultimately hapless effort to offer pseudo-cybernetic convenience, it came equipped with crude programmablity: macro text could be input for subsequent auto-disgorgement, and basic formatting could purportedly be replicated with the touch of a finger or two. It ran fast and quiet with a whole set of daisy-wheels for quick font changes. It sat like furniture on the spare desk. In recollection of the many term papers I typed in college on a manual Smith Corona that I cradled on my lap as I sat cross-legged in my rotating captain’s chair, I was inclined favorably toward the Olivetti.  I was ready to embrace it. 

Well, the sweeter the anticipation, the more bitter the disappointment, I suppose. It was with a light heart and flippant fingers that I first approached the Olivetti keyboard - and there I immediately faltered. The on-switch? Okay, it’s hidden behind a cosmetic ridge running the length of the upper surface of the massive chassis. Setting an envelope into the platen? A bit tricky, but I sussed out the slot and felt myself equal to my task. My medium was message-ready, awaiting only instruction from me, its master.

The keys were hefty and inviting; the mechanism shivered electrically before me. I typed. Nothing happened. I was stumped. I typed again. Again, nothing. I sensed the first hints of frustration blossoming within me. I set my jaw and started exploring the keyboard. Was there an output key? Print? Type? What the hell was going on?

What I encountered were a series of idiosynchratic keys, like “progr” and “expr.” and “end text”, arranged idiosyncratically in two blocks on either side of the letter keys, with a tiny piece of electronic screenage stranded above the number keys and surmounted by arcane legends. I began to strike at the keys - strategically at first, and then at random. Suddenly the machine burst into life, the daisy wheel whirling and sliding back and forth, the platen cranking around of its own accord. The envelope dropped out of sight and then shot out from behind the plastic page-guard. Clacking ensued - too much clacking for how much I’d typed. Some other letter was being created, without paper and contrary to my intentions.  The damn thing had a mind of its own, and that mind seemed to be badly confused.

I shouted, but it did not listen. It just clacked its way through some irrelevant text, an automaton with no regard for my preferences. I fed the spit-out envelope back in again; tried again, to no avail. My irritation waxed; I leaned back and took stock. I’d run the envelope through three times now; it was permanently curled and insistently blank. The letter beside me remained unposted and daylight was ticking away. I had exhausted both my ingenuity and my patience, and still the Olivetti hunched, black and imperturbable, on its dusty desk. It, too, was dusty, a fine layer of schmutz covering the keys, thicker between them and on the platen-cover. With all those dirty chunky keys it seemed to be smiling at me - smirking, even, with blackened teeth badly in need of a technological flossing. Instead, I took up a goddamned pen and wrote out an address by hand on a fresh envelope. Then I taught myself how to make the HP printer do it for me with decent reliability.  It had seemed a tad inconvenient at first to rely on the printer, but now it was obviously the most efficient of my available options.

Over the years our printers were upgraded and grew increasingly intuitive and effective. Nobody used the Olivetti anymore. It was relegated a few years ago to a back counter in an adjacent department, and faded from our thoughts. Then, a few months ago, the adjacent department discovered a higher use for that counter, and the Olivetti reappeared into our midst. In the interim we’d had a few staffing changes and the cube across from me had gone vacant.  That’s where the Olivetti went.

Now I see it every day, every time I enter or leave my workspace. It squats like a massive toad, phlegmatic, unknowable, secretive. It’s not even a paperweight now, all alone in its empty workstation, a specter of bygone days under a deepening mantle of desuetude and dust. Its hidden “on” switch remains untouched and its platen remains unpapered. I can now print without leaving my desk, in color, two-sided, collated and stapled. I can crank out the envelopes without a second thought. Instead, I spare that second thought for the Olivetti. And that’s all it’s going to get from me. Sometimes the past is best left behind us. I just can’t work up any nostalgia about carbon paper, either.