Greatest hits 2016–2019

It’s hard for me to explain how I feel about Twitter. On one hand, there is the abuse, the Nazis, and Jack Dorsey’s almost legendary indolence. When it doesn’t chip away at your attention, Twitter creates – and then supercharges – your outrage.

But also: Twitter has been helpful and, as cheesy as it sounds, made me a better person. Yes, I sometimes become snarky and (very occasionally) even cruel, but I also try hard to follow activists, pay attention to thoughtful people, and listen to many who simply… don’t look like me.

As for the book, I quoted Twitter many times in this newsletter, and there’s a reason: it is on Twitter that I found a great community of people that engage me, share things with me, cheer me on when I share my process, and up when I struggle. This has been a crucial part of writing, and I’m thankful for it.

So, this newsletter will be rather simple: just links to my best/most popular Twitter threads related to the book. You’ll have to brave Twitter’s oft-confusing user interface – but I swear it’ll be worth it.

Two things you should know:

1. Each tweet below holds a longer thread. To see it, click/tap on the blue bird icon in the upper right corner.

2. If you find yourself in a situation where my tweets suddenly stop and other people’s responses take over, look for a tiny orange “XX more replies” link to continue reading my thread.

Beautiful things

Since April 2017, I’ve been collecting examples of beautifully-made keyboards – starting with the more obvious ones, but since having moved to less charted territories:

It’s not just keyboards. Even some of the touch typing manuals can be great-looking:

A few fun stories

This is a forgotten story of Typit, the typewriter extension to solve a problem we all take for granted today:

Step aside Enigma, the most interesting crypto keyboard is… the Barbie Typewriter:

And, speaking of cryptography – a story of that one time I keylogged myself:

About a few keys

This is a thread about the unexpected origins of the ⌘ key:

Never meet your heroes, or an internet appliance with an unusual button:

And, an ongoing thread of weird keys in general:

Solving mysteries

I ask people to send me the most unusual keyboards they can think of without any context, as a challenge:

Other times, people help me out in identification. This Spectrum joystick should look familiar if you read the last newsletter:

A few months earlier, Twitter friends helped me figure out the make of a rather unusual and rare computer:

Not everything’s super great

Through this Twitter thread, you might learn to hate novelty calculators:

…or wristwatch keyboards:

Or Soviet clones of Spectrum computers (of course, it’s entirely possible you’ll learn to love them instead):

Smaller threads (on smaller things)

“This note in a used book I just bought broke my heart”:

Great miniature art by Tanaka Tatsuya. He’s been doing it for so long that just the keyboard-related entires make for a great thread:

“3–8 minute shorts about old men repairing typewriters.”

Pop culture

Once I asked about movies that feature typing, and people floored me with their answers (fun game: count how often my response is “Ooooh.”):

A grab bag of fun links about auto-suggest/auto-complete/spell check/predictive text:

Around the world

This thread of people sending in translations of the term “touch typing” in different languages was extraordinary:

I went to Japan and I started documenting every keyboard I saw… and then gave up. There were too many:

At a museum in Laws, California, I also found a surprising number of keyboards – and then convinced the staff to let me into secret areas just so I could take some photos for the book: 

A by-appointment-only office tech museum in Delaware had some great artifacts inside:

Another museum in Catalonia revealed so, so many old-school computers with fantastic keyboards (and this thread’s Esc jokes feel timely again!):

And speaking of Catalonia – this here, in late 2016, is my most popular Twitter thread, and a truly miraculous discovery that gave me so much joy and energy (in hindsight so necessary to continue working on this book for so long):

2020

What does the next year bring? I don’t know much, but I have two ideas:

The first is to actually return to that very museum in Figueres, Spain – get to know the owners/collectors, take among the last photos I need for the book, and reunite with that magical place.

The second one? 

The book should come out in late 2020. I think. I hope. I so far avoided promising dates since there have always been so many unknowns on the horizon. But while I am still uncertain of many upcoming tasks, my understanding of the rest of the process is that this – a late 2020 publishing date – should be eminently doable. 

So please keep your fingers crossed, send your best wishes, and… I guess, follow me on Twitter. It’s usually fun, and I’d love your comments and feedback, although sometimes my tweets misfire – as is the case with this recent depressing Christmas thread.

But I won’t leave on that note. Following the last year’s tradition, I have a message for you, written on a one-of-a-kind keyboard. I very much encourage you to view the movie in higher quality, with sound on, but either way:

That 16-segment-display exclamation point is just the best

Marcin

This was newsletter №19 for Shift happens, an upcoming book about keyboards. Read previous issues · Check out all the secret documents