Have you ever considered how different creating documents with text would be without the use of a computer? Yeah, me neither. That is until I was given an assignment in my English class to do just that.
My Pamphlet is about a rapper by the name of DPR Live. DPR is one of my favorite musical artists. I do not go a day without listening to his music. I chose to focus my article on his most recent album, "Is Anybody Out There?". It is very well done, and utilizes more than just music to relay the mood of each song to the listener. Long story short, I chose to write about him, because I'm a fan.
I had to design and create this article without the use of modern machinery or software. I used a website which has a typewriter simulator. This is where my problems started. I had a heck of a time figuring out how to fix my typos. At first, I would completely close the website no matter how many far I was into typing up my paper. This was the only way I could think to fix my mistake.
Then, after I got sick of doing that, I thought, "So what of there are a few typos on my paper? It's no big deal,". I knew at this point I had had it, because I am a perfectionist, and the fact that I was ok with having mistakes on my assignment really speaks volumes. Luckily I was able to figure out that I could fix my mistakes by using the correction paper.
Not being able to easily erase, was not the only issue I ran into, not by a longshot. Everything about the formatting and creating of this project was an issue. I didn't know where my margins were, I didn't have as much control over where I began typing, or where the input of text would start. For example, in a word document you can easily control where you want your cursor to be. In the typewriting simulator, you had to press space every single time you wanted to move your cursor across the page.
Another thing that was an issue for me, was not being able to rely on the software in Word that tells you if you spelled something incorrectly or made a punctuation error. You have to solely rely on your knowledge of language and hope that you are spelling everything correctly. I suppose you could take the time to find the word in the dictionary, but that just adds even more time onto your already time consuming assignment.
Speaking of time, this took me so much longer to complete than it would have if I was able to use a computer. After all of the revisions and careful typing I had to do, I understood why typewriters were a thing of the past. They're just simply not as efficient as modern day computers.
It was very frustrating to have to downgrade from a computer to a typewriter for this project. I now have a better understanding of the effort it took to create print, but I did not enjoy it at all. However, I do like my finished product. All in all, I am very thankful that we no longer have to go through such pains to complete simple documents. Being able to type freely, and add pictures and titles to our papers with minimal effort is a great privilege.