Death of the typewriter vastly exaggerated

It’s 9:30 am in New York, and already I’ve seen several Facebook updates bemoaning the death of the typewriter- even though most people haven’t really seen a typewriter in a vast many years and hadn’t really, up until now, spared any fucks at all to the cause of the dying art of typewritering.

Of course, humans do tend to wait until something’s gone to really miss it, as evidenced with long-declining restaurant chains and beloved consumer items like Jell-O’s Pudding Pops. So the news yesterday that the world’s very last typewriters- infernal machines that required paper to be fed into them sheet by sheet and ribbon maintenance- sparked off a wave of anti-Word Processor nostalgia, as was to be expected.

Except, as Gawker points out, that the story was extrapolated from one about a single typewriter maker going out of business. Typewriters are still pretty widely available, and according to the gossip site via some other site, stand to be for some time:

The typewriter is “far from dead,” [says] Ed Michael, General Manager of Sales at Moonachie, NJ-based Swintec.

“We have manufacturers making typewriters for us in China, Japan, Indonesia,” Michael says. “We have contracts with correctional facilities in 43 states to supply clear typewriters for inmates so they can’t hide contraband inside them,” Michael explained.

So, are we all going to rush out and buy one just in case?