Recently, we were teasing my sister. She works in accounting
and one day at her office, she mentioned Stenos and no one
knew what she was talking about. She has many younger coworkers, it seems. But you remember Steno notebooks, right? Green
paper, red stripe down the middle. We always had them around the house and that
red line continually irked me. I’m going to assume that people who work with numbers
know something about its use but for me, it only got in the way. We teased my sister because no one uses or, God
forbid, says “Stenos” anymore, do
they?
Today, someone on Twitter asked about touchscreen desktops
and what the pros and cons were. I have a touchscreen, I said, but rarely
use it. I forget that I can, and I don’t want fingerprints, I told her. But
maybe, just maybe, it’s a bit of the Steno in me. New tricks, older-ish dog,
etc.
We’re lucky, aren’t we, to live in a time with so many tools
for writing? In the movie 12 Years a
Slave, there’s a compelling sequence in which the main character, enslaved after living his entire life free, educated, and
privileged, tries to fashion a writing utensil and ink from the crude supplies
at hand. Although his main goal was to get a letter out to his family, I took
it also as a metaphor for how every aspect of his past, cultured life had been taken
away.
A while back, I wrote a piece for Author
magazine, tracing my own experiences with technology since I began
writing. I’m re-sharing it here (From Hand to Screen: Technology and the Writer), in case you missed it the first time around.
And now I'm off to look for those Steno notebooks, stashed away
somewhere and filled with poetry…
* For those curious about the origins of the Steno pad (and it has nothing to do with numbers), click here.
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