I remember using carbon paper with my theatre students - they were entranced! "You mean it makes a copy - right now?"
the world never ceases to amaze me - and that's a good thing.

Time to bring back the Code Talkers? Here in Native America there are lots of almost extinct languages that even the NSA would struggle to decipher. Navajo is particularly challenging, since there is no time sense, directly, in the language - no past, present, future tense. I won't give away how they get around that - might need it soon.

I'm jealous of today's technology. My senior thesis, then a requirement for graduation, took me five months to complete, with an entire weekend to type (40+ pages).

With the internet and MS Word, it would've taken me two weeks (tops), and I could have enjoyed my last semester in college.

This is just like in AS when they had to revert to stage coaches for transportation in the end. Big government screws everything up. I agree with the government funding programs like NASA and cancer research, I don't mind my tax dollars being spent on new discoveries, however, I think everyone can agree they don't want their tax money spent on spying on the German president or other innocent people. Germany is one of the few countries left that still has its act together.

Given the horrible grammar and spelling issues that computers allow people to get away with.....

Can you imagine the depths of incomprehensibility the output of people dependent upon computers that are forced to use non-correcting typewriters will sink?

Oh could I use a little practice on cursive and the ole manual typewriter. Memories!

Damn! Every time I come up with a idea for some ironic near-future fiction, along comes the real world and steals it from me.

First of all, I have to admit that I'm a lousy typist. Secondly, being somewhat dyslexic, I make lots of errors. On a typewriter this was a real hassle. I went through literally dozens of bottles of White-Out. The computer hasn't made me a better typist, but it sure made corrections a lot easier. I can't say as I blame Germany; when we can't trust the NSA, how can they?

The fact that we are at the point were we assume the NSA could have modified our computing hardware is very troubling. I don't think the SciFi books imagined the NSA intercepting a shipment to modify hardware. The problem is much more than the NSA. It is our society.

Little hope of success. With the exception of a manual typewriter, we can intercept pretty much everything. Are they going to hand-deliver everything, or would someone fax a document? If they mail it, we can grab that too. You're talking sneaker-net and diplomatic pouches, with zero corruptible employees in a country that is mostly embarrassed by their past.

We used to have cameras inside the Xerox copiers at the Kremlin and the Russian embassies, anything they copied, we took a picture of.

An IBM Selectric would be easy, it uses a processor to send an ASCII code to the daisy wheel,and we can grab that and print it remotely somewhere else, we would catch everything, even the backspaces.

We used a sub to attach a vampire tap to undersea cables in Russian military harbors and reproduced everything, even if encrypted, then broke the encryption with super computers.

If all else fail, a lot of Germans drink a lot of beer, just buy one off to make copies.

Point is, we are fantastically good at this, and we spy on everyone and they spy on us with varying degrees of success.

We came out of the Cold War pretty good at spy craft.

Typewriters are fine. For secure communication, you need codes and ciphers. Some libraries shelve my book on cryptography, _The Code Book_ (Loompanics, 1979, 1984). http://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/2013/... It is pretty easy to make an unbreakable code. It is impossible to make an unbreakable cipher. No one who has not broken codes and ciphers should think that they can make a secure one.

Back in the 70s and 80s, _The Libertarian Connection_ was mailed out every six weeks. We sent in our work. They collated it, and sent it out. Each subscriber submitted two pages free with the subscription. After that you bought pages for $1 each. Originally, we sent our pages as mimeograph stencils. Later, they went to photocopy. Among the writers were Robert Poole, Jr., Tibor Machan, Sharon Presley, and Murray N. Rothbard. Many people used aliases: The Wolverine, The Friendly Falcon, Aragorn Beowulf, etc.

I have two typewriters: a Smith Corona portable that a publisher gave me; and a IBM Selectric that I rescued from a sidewalk. Later today, I will mail a letter that my wife wrote by hand.

When I goto the post office, I always ask for the latest commemoratives. ("Regular" stamps are called "definitives." If the clerk know what you mean, they, too, are a philatelist.)