INSOMNIA
Its a word not a sentence they say, but to Jane it was a
sentence, a complete sentence, a life sentence.
It came any
time that a weariness flooded over her and demanded she recline. The very second she succumb and laid her head
to rest, her mind would become a shattered mirror of recollections. Shards of thoughts
, glinting images, ideas, solutions, problems flashed behind her closed eyes. Her body would drench itself in a hot sweat
of anxiety and cold shivers of fear.
This was not
normal for a normal person.
But Jane was
a normal person, as normal as anyone she knew, she fitted into society, had friends.
The red leather sofa was reclined again tonight, the TV showing
a drama repeat with the sound muted. A smart
side-table light stained the room with a dullness that softened edges and blurred
the colours she had so carefully chosen.
The sofa had turned out to be Jane’s workbench. It was intended as a place of comfort, of composure,
a place she could fall to when there was a hope she may slip away without her
brain ambushing her. She saw the sofa though as her workbench for
the simple reason she so often ended up working here. It was where she would be
most nights, pecking at the laptop, prodding at an i-screen, social surfing, emailing,
looking at stuff. Sleep again, as usual,
had once more failed to claim her mind. Jane was considering her 2 bedrooms a complete
waste of space.
As it turned out, this night was to be a night of
inspiration as she had decided to use her keyboard to bore herself to sleep. Just to keep writing stuff brainlessly on a
blank word doc until her fingers paused, her eyes drooped and the screen dimmed. It was a plan. She started …
“ It used to be the pounding at letter buttons, smashing
inked keys into paper, now we are still clicking letter buttons and pushing digits
around a screen, same old thing though, same way of data capture for, what, nearly
two centuries? Yeah, Wikywords says 1819
was the first practical typewriter. Wonder
when keyboards standardised as qwerty keyboard.
This was done because typewriters used to have levers throwing type keys
at paper. Qwerty key order came about so
that frequently used key levers didn’t jam as they swung past each other. At least that is what I understand as the
reason. There was another theory, one
that said some blokes changed the order to slow down female typers who were
more proficient than the men. I don’t know about that, is typers a word? Should be.
Typist sounds such a female term , or is that just me?
I remember, later on,
maybe in the 1970’s there were sort of golf ball type-heads, but they still got
thrown against paper. A carbon ribbon flew
up and down between the paper and the type head. The ribbon was textile, later a plastic
film. Copies were made by carbon paper
being put between pages, the copies at the back got fuzzy. Photocopiers didn’t happen till the late 70’s
IBM had a thing called a CopierII . It was massive and used huge rolls of heat
sensitive paper. There was lots of
paper. Typewriter paper came in
different thinness’s so more copies could be made. Is that the right use for an apostrophe in
thinness’s? Spell-check, what a
marvellous thing. And thin carbon paper
was more expensive. Any errors were made
in duplicate, triplicate and more. Corrections
were re-typed or pages thrown away, some machines had sticky tape so a
backspace and retype would pull the plastic film letters off, didn’t fix the
carbon copies though. I can’t recall
when the carbon paper got replaced by pressure sensitive duplicating paper but the back pages still got blurry an
Hey that’s good.
Dozed off, clock says only for minutes though. Where was I?
Oh yeah. That’s all I’ve got about
keyboards, but here I am still using one. Although predictive text, that’s
nice. As is punctuation correct, capital
letter after a full stop, I rely on that.
Ive tried, … oh look it doesn’t recognise Ive for an
apostrophe but it does for doesn’t . I’ve. Ive.
No it doesn’t learn … Voice recognition does learn, that’s getting so
much better too, I use voice recognition a lot now, texting, I even use it to
draft notes. It is getting so good
pretty soon we will be able to use it for most writing and form filling. That
will be nice. Then we could talk our
texts, letters and emails into existence.
If the person receiving them had the same voice recognition thing they
could hear them read out. Maybe we could
have a program that mimicked our voice tone.
It would be like text-talking to each other, or at each other. But texting voice to voice would be like a
machine solution that would allow us to have something I will call
textversation where we speak into a
machine and almost immediately, or even immediately, the person could similarly
reply. I’d call it textiphone, or
voicelink or something like telephonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn
nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn
Oh, another nap. Twenty minutes that time. I’m getting to think this may just catch
on. I wonder if anyone else goes to
sleep while keyboarding. I really hope
voice to text to voice doesn’t, ooh, look that was
another auto apostrophe, Ive,
nope still hasn’t learned, but it does
know hasn’t has an apostrophe. I must
think of more apostrophised words…. Later though. I wonder if touch screen and skype could be
developed so you could feel the person you are talking to. Oh my god, imagine porn sights then. Have to develop some pretty impressive
waterproofed touch-screen tech though.
Wet-wipe tolerant. I would call
it datafeel , or smutversation. No hang on, this isn’t working. My brain’s going all mirror-shatter
again. I’m seeing talking appendages and
orifices with dialogue pulsing under my handprint, hot skin throbbing to my
touch
.”
Jane stopped writing and went to her bed, she had things to
do there now and bed was the best place for it.
