Submission + - No Country for Old Typewriters 1
saddleupsancho writes: Today's New York Times reports that Cormac McCarthy is auctioning his 45-plus-year-old Olivetti manual typewriter, on which all his novels, screenplays, plays, short stories, and much of his correspondence were written, to benefit the Sante Fe Institute where he is a Research Fellow. What would happen decades from now if, say, Richard Powers or Neal Stephenson attempted to auction their desktops or laptops? Settling aside completely any comparison between the three authors, is there something more intrinsically interesting and valuable, less ephemeral and interchangeble, about a typewriter as part of the act of creation than a computer? Or are computer-based devices just as sentimental to the current generation as McCarthy's Olivetti is to his? Would you offer more for McCarthy's Olivetti than if it were a generic PC, Mac, or Linux box?
