The Tapping of Keys

My good friend Tim recently read Shift Happens, a book about computer keyboards.

I mentioned this to some other friends, bracing myself for a comment along the lines of “blimey, that’s a bit niche,” but one of them said, thoughtfullly, “I should really read a book about keyboards.”

So who knows what’s going on out there? Or maybe this is just what my friends are like.

Anyway, Chumrad Tim shares a quote from said book with us. It invites us to consider the differences between pre- and post-War offices:

…the conspicuous silence hovering over the partitions, interupted only by the tapping of keys, comes from the enforcement of surveillance.

The full quote, really, doesn’t come from Shift Happens but from another book called Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace by Nikil Saval.

Computers and automation had brought the blues to the white-collar workplace.

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Issue 17 has sold out! But never fear, it’s still available in digital formats singly or bundled. There’s also a few copies of Issue 16 — perhaps our best work to date — still gettable in print.