The Hindu Business Line : <I>Manual typewriter to Microsoft</I>

The other day, time weighing heavily on me, and finding nothing better (or worse) to do, I rang up a friend and fellow Chennai-ite, on his mobile number, just to have a little, casual chat. He came on line, and just as I began tossing a few trite nothings, he abruptly cut me, asking whether the chatting could wait till he returned to India, since he was in a conference in Vancouver! Vancouver! I was taken aback. And well, I might! Old-timer that I am, I could not imagine that mobile phone connects everyone everywhere in an instant at the mere press of a few buttons. The voice too comes through resonant, loud and clear, as if the guy is sitting next to you.

Miracles

Frankly, I, traipsing into my eighties, never thought I would live to see such marvels. For, I grew up holding the manual typewriter in awe as the ultimate in technology. One delightedly pounded the keys to one's heart's content, and never minded the strain of pounding all the harder, when carbon copies had to be made. In those days, corrections were carried out, either by razor, later by eraser, and still later, by white fluid, in the original as well as in the copies.

`Cyclostyling' machines were used to make larger number of copies. The process was a messy one: The matter had to be typed on a special paper, which had to be stuck round a drum, over which black fudge was spread, and the drum rotated manually with the help of a handle with sheets of paper round another roller pressed against the drum for the imprint. As likely as not, the contents of copies coming out of it would be smudged, and in all sorts of angles; elegance and legibility were, of course, a far cry.

Then came electric, followed by electronic, typewriters on the one hand, and xerox photocopiers, telex/teleprinters and fax machines on the other, and we felt we were on cloud 9. Well, we have left all of that far behind, and are pat in the midst of all the miracles of the technological revolution sweeping the globe. I cannot still believe that at the click of a mouse copies can be forwarded to thousands, and replies elicited in seconds, whereas barely 25 years ago, surface mail, say, between the US and India, took 30 days both ways, and expensive telephone calls were the only means of instant communication.

Suppose, with the help of a Time Machine, we transport all of these wondrous facilities to the eras of Shakespeare, Milton, Bacon, Tholkappiar, Thiruvalluvar, Kambar, Thulasidas, Surdas et al working on palm leaves and quill pens: Would it not have helped catapult their creativity to such great heights as to blaze the trail of a dazzling literary renaissance?

Or, would it?

The question whether and to what extent technological prowess serves as a handmaiden of intellectual creativity is still undecided. Indeed, there is some ground for doubting the existence of any correlation. For instance, take the case of the calculator. In its absence, many old timers were able to do mental calculations, including reciting multiplication tables, with effortless ease and dependable accuracy. These days, I have seen Mall counters stalled because of the inability of the assistants to do simple additions and subtractions, when cash registers malfunction temporarily.

Moral: Technology should be used to reinforce, and not displace, mental virility.

B. S. RAGHAVAN