The Cheapest Distraction-Free Writing Machine You’ll Ever Find

Behold the glory of the 1990s-era Alphasmart

Clive Thompson
5 min readApr 30

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A month ago I wrote a blog post entirely using my old manual typewriter.

It was a bit of a stunt, of course. But it felt oddly modern. Cognitively speaking, typing out an essay felt quite similar to writing via voice-dictation on my smartphone. In both cases —…

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Clive Thompson

I write 2X a week on tech, science, culture — and how those collide. Writer at NYT mag/Wired; author, “Coders”. @clive@saturation.social clive@clivethompson.net