TL;DR: do you really think I'd have written the wall of text below with a pen? :)

=============================

Yes and no.

As a musician, I can tell you that interfaces definitely matter. Everything, from color to tactile feel and weight affect the way you use any tool. You can get a perfect software emulator of, say, a Yamaha DX-7, and yet you will be surprised to see how different you sound when you play the actual thing.

Same with typing. I don't write with a pen, period. I can; I take notes, I doodle, I do math with pen and paper. But I can't write large amounts of text with a pen. It comes out differently because the interface of moving a stylus is different from typing.

There's a reason writers used to be obsessed with their typewriters (and still are). There's a reason why George R. R. Martin writes his books on a DOS machine[1]. Those reasons have to do with why the OP has a point.

I think differently when I type; the brain-finger interface works differently than speech. Sometimes I look away from the screen, and see that my fingers typed things that I didn't intend to type. Apparently, I am typing at the level of words, not keystrokes, and when I look away from the screen, sometimes my brain cheats and misspells words. Not typos; the letters would be far apart. I couldn't possibly do the same thing with a pen, because I can't write legibly without looking at what I'm writing; and generally, it's not a thing that people are trained to do.

But with typing, you can do it.

The computer keyboard and the typewriter are not that much different in that respect; but the ability to undo and delete most certainly has an effect on the writing process. That's because you don't have to pause anymore before writing a sentence; you can type it as it forms in your brain, and you can backtrack easily. Yes, paper is cheap, and you can cross things out; but it adds friction, and it doesn't really feel nice (if I were writing this, half a page would be crossed out already - as even with the pauses, my mind jumps around enough).

You can also add text into previous passages without rewriting it. You can even restructure text on the fly. Of course you can do it with paper, too; and you can even plan in advance and leave enough spacing to be able to make corrections if needed, but it's not the default thing people do with paper, and defaults matter.

Film photography vs. digital photography vs. cellphone photography vs. instant photography would be a better comparison, I feel. All devices that can produce photographs have their strengths and weaknesses, but it's not about that. It's about what the device is optimal for when you pick it up and use without tweaking and putting much thoughts into it. Self-portraits existed since cameras were around, but selfies needed a cell phone to take off.

The car analogy has merit. Look back 100 years ago; literacy was a struggle. People didn't generally didn't have a need to write, and writing used to cost you, in terms of tools, paper, time, and effort required to do it.

Do you really believe writing like this very comment that you are reading was commonplace back then? Disputes, discussions, discourses all existed; but having a public discourse in written correspondence required a space on the newspaper page at the very least. Craigslist's "Missed Connections" and rants about absurd listings ("RE: Antique sofa, needs TLC, $1750" - "The HELL is wrong with someone who's listing this? You've been doing it for three months now, pal, nobody wants this crap") are reminiscent of what it used to be before mail/comment threads came around.

Speaking of written communication, look how SMS texting affected writing culture ("ok thx by cya l8r"), and how it all but disappeared after swipe-typing and autocomplete became the norm.

So you have to take it in context. A car analogy isn't perfect, but it's not that far off. The tools that we use for communicating affect the communication that flows through them.

Personally, I've been using "distraction-free" devices for a while now, but I just called it "taking a laptop to the park" (where there's no WiFi), or, God forbid, turning off WiFi or communication apps when I don't need them.

Coming back to music, even with a good DAW, field recorders, 4-tracks, and even straight up recording on a cell phone all have their use. The potato quality of a cell phone video vs. running line-in through the mixer + FX + DSP chain + DAW is a feature, not a bug. I just know that if I record through a DAW, I'll end up doing dozens (...hundreds) of takes to get it just right. A tool that is imperfect by default liberates one from that.

So while I am not someone to get too excited about the devices in the paper, I can understand the appeal.

As for me, I end up having the opposite problem: once I started typing, I end up hitting the character limit more often than I'd like to admit (it's 8000 characters on Facebook, in case you were wondering; I've hit it on all platforms). Even the cellphone's distractions aren't strong enough to pull me away from writing out a long thought, and the whole world can wait. The devices from the article enable what is already easy for me to do (and when I want to write, I still take to trusty notepad.exe, the best text editor I've ever had for that purpose).

For myself, I found that TikTok had a transformative effect with the way it limits comments. I've been forced to be brief for the first time in my life. And as they say, limitation breeds creativity. This limitation forces me to step back.

A Kickstarter idea for people like me: a digital typewriter that punishes verbosity. Sorry, you can only type 300 words a day, and it locks you out after that. Use your characters wisely.

Anyone down to make one?

[1]https://time.com/99432/george-rr-martin-game-of-thrones-comp...