Pen To Be Extinct In A Decade?

[paulmi603]

Hopefully he is just talking about cheap 25 cent ball point pens.

[a_m]

Oh this Microsoft - such big global company fears a five inch fountain pen ! Looks at it as competition ! And wishes its demise ! Till there are such enthudiastic users as on FPN the FP is not going to get defeated - but come out triumphant !

[Sasha Royale]

He is the CEO of Microsoft, and that qualifies him to judge anything ? I don't know his name.

I never did. His opinion of fountain pens is a flea's fart in a hurricane. I will ignore him.

[takkun]

Elsewhere in the Puget Sound...

http://blogs.seattletimes.com/monica-guzman/2013/09/28/4000-and-counting-the-handwritten-letters-of-shorelines-charles-morrison/

(and yes, I looked at the pen, I'm guessing a No-Nonsense calligraphy pen)

 

Just here to reiterate what essentially everyone else has said:

Way back when, MS tried to introduce the world to pen computing and consumer smartphones. Now everything has a touchscreen. Long story short, good idea, horrible implementation (anyone remember Windows CE/the original Windows Phone?). I'm curious if this is their idea of product foreshadowing.

 

It's curious he specifically mentions fountain pens. Perhaps obsolete for the majority of people for what little daily writing people still do. It'd take the complete elimination of paper to get rid of FPs for us diehards here.

 

Someone mentioned electronic documents and banking, and I'm reminded of an old Sheaffer ad that predicted the 'credit card ring'. It's more the world as a whole moving away from signatures and forms that makes pens less ubiquitous. I'd like to see better implementation of handwriting recognition, and good alternatives to the keyboard/mouse. I vaguely remember when the Newton and Palm was hot stuff with pen input, and 20 years later we still use keyboards. Who knows what'll be next.

 

And about the longevity and simplicity of the pen: a personal anecdote. I studied journalism in undergrad and was a reporter briefly, and voice recorders, dictation apps and the like didn't come close to the freedom of a pad and pen for taking notes. Im in graduate school for architecture now, and we've got AutoCAD, 3D printers, laser cutters and Smart Boards. Despite that, there's nary a laptop to be seen in lectures, everyone's got a fountain pen, and the design process is basically all on paper until presentation time. Niche examples, I know, but it goes to show that for spontaneity and longevity, paper is still infallible. You don't need to learn software, there's no virtual folders for anything to get lost in. Now I just want some easy way to get all that into the computer when it's time to.

 

Maybe its a symptom of poor handwriting education, which ends up in a feedback loop: maybe people would be less inclined to do *everything* digitally if they could read their own handwriting.

[domnortheast]

Maybe its a symptom of poor handwriting education, which ends up in a feedback loop: maybe people would be less inclined to do *everything* digitally if they could read their own handwriting.

I suspect you are right.

 

That and the fact that handwriting practice takes time and effort over a long period whereas keyboarding is more immediate and convenient; the results being legible whether one types fast or slow (at least the typeface is legible....whether the content makes sense is another matter). That then leads on to the complaint that there is not enough time to spend messing around with handwriting.

 

Funny how often the more convenient and 'time-saving' a process is the less time we have available. All this 'saved time' must go somewhere....stored in a special time vault in a parallel dimension perhaps?

Edited February 12, 2015 by Stanley Howler

[amk]

Transcript of a press call, January 17, 1454

 

Nurembergische Inkunabula-Zeitung: Mr Gutenberg, your movable type has revolutionised the world of the book. No more making woodblocks! no more having to queue up to read the only copy of St Augustine in the monastic library! No more...

 

Neue-Gazette, Mainz: Get on with it.

 

N.I.Z: Do you expect that your new invention will make older technologies obsolete?

 

Joh. Gutenberg: Er, yeah. Like that one. (points at N.I.Z's pen).

 

Neue Inkunabula-Zeitung, January 20, 1454

 

"DEATH OF THE PEN!

 

Johannes Gutenberg, inventor of new printing technology 'Type That Moves TM', has predicted the imminent demise of handwriting.

 

According to Mr Gutenberg, we should no longer be teaching Textura, Fraktur, Chancery, Rotunda or Bastarda in any of our schools. Within the lifetime of today's schoolboys no one will use a pen. We will all have our own movable printing press. The pen is redundant.

 

Analysts foresee a massive wave of redundancies in the monastic scriptoria. But Theo Gutleben, head of the woodblock artisans' union in Cologne, has this to say...."

[a m a r g o]

I remember the death of vinyl and turntables being much predicted. However It's still being used today, increasingly by people who didn't grow up with it.

I reckon vinyl will outlast the CD, which would of seemed ridiculous five years ago

 

Fountain Pens, ink and paper are similar in some respects. They provide an analogue, physical experience which computers can't replace.

 

Whenever there's a new technology there's a rush to use it as much as possible at the expense of older technologies. Gradually there's a rebalancing, and some of the older tech is revived. More people are starting to write physical letters again, and hand written notes are becoming more popular as they're shown to help people remember information more than other digital methods

Indeed, in that regard books could be an analogue to writing instruments in general. I see quite often meaningful books being bought in paper and/or limited editions and travel novels or articles being bought exclusively in digital format, which in certain way is the niche gained by fountain pens in a ballpoint world...

 

It could be where the market / offer is headed, at least in developed economies, because I can't really see the extinction of writing instruments in four fifths of the planet just yet.

[alexander_k]

I don't know about you lot but I'm rather relieved: I have another decade to enjoy my pens; I thought the world would end earlier than that.

Edited February 12, 2015 by alexander_k

[Otter1]

Never believe a CEO's predictions, they are always selling you something.

 

When I started in the computer industry in the early 80's, the phrase being tossed around was 'the paperless office' with the idea being that everything would be electronic and no one would ever need paper again. What actually happened is that paper stayed, and more electronic forms of documentation/communication grew up around it.

 

-Otter1

[welch]

I predict that Microsoft Bob will have become extinct a decade ago. Same with Microsoft Team Manager. In 1996, my office moved. I skimmed some copies of PC Tech Journal as I threw them out. About 1986, Bill Gates predicted that by 1989 we would all be using Advanced DOS (ADOS), which would have been a merger of XENIX and OS/2. Curious: how long did Windows ME last? Did your company switch to Windows Vista? Or did it, like mine, conclude that Vista was a bug-riddled memory hog, and stick with XP until Microsoft released something better?

[inkstainedruth]

You know, when you have the little pin-pad with the touch screen where you sign your name after swiping your credit card in a store? That technology for reading/storing your signature was come up with by IBM back in the early 1970s. They had some sort of open house/picnic at the facility where my dad worked and I remember standing in a long line in order to get my signature printed out on the old green and white striped printer paper, and every nth person in line got to have their signature engraved into a plaque for a thing to put on your desk (I got one; my brother, standing right behind me in line, didn't...). I think I was about 12 at the time. Took what, 25-30 years to get the technology to the consumer? Don't think we have to worry about going paperless anytime soon.

Welch, my husband's former company was one of those who clung to to XP because Vista was so buggy the CFO (and one of the co-founders) was afraid to install it on any company machine.

Oh, and apparently the Microsoft CEO didn't read that thing Richard Branson of Virgin wrote about taking notes at meetings....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[jar]

I predict that Microsoft Bob will have become extinct a decade ago. Same with Microsoft Team Manager. In 1996, my office moved. I skimmed some copies of PC Tech Journal as I threw them out. About 1986, Bill Gates predicted that by 1989 we would all be using Advanced DOS (ADOS), which would have been a merger of XENIX and OS/2. Curious: how long did Windows ME last? Did your company switch to Windows Vista? Or did it, like mine, conclude that Vista was a bug-riddled memory hog, and stick with XP until Microsoft released something better?

 

Stuck with UNIX™ and X-Terminals until Windows2K and then gradually they replaced X-Terminals as low cost large format Windows PCs became competitive in price. But it was a hard sell to get folk to give up their big X-Terms for the big, bulky, Windows CRTs. It was only when the thin 1920+ montitors became available that folk were willing to switch.

 

Central storage, processing and fail over protection stayed on the UNIX™ boxes even then.

[pepsiplease69]

As long as technology tries to feverishly speed things up, make everything more efficient, more busy, more faster, more digital.

 

Human beings will want to slow down, and be more "human", more "analog".

 

We say we want everything faster, but like mama always said "you don't always know what is good for you and what's not".

 

 

There'll always be a backlash when the pendulum swings too far in one direction. The slow food movement in response to fast food, for example.

 

I think the death knell for Fountain pens has already come and gone, and it's called the ballpoint.

 

Fountain pens are still here, still going strong, making a resurgence even.

 

New inks coming out, new models, innovations happening in this industry. Not just gaudy pens or ones laden with precious metals, or precious lacquer or uriushi etc. Real workhorse pens we use everyday and people see us using them stop and take note.

 

It's because people like you and I are making it a viable industry.

 

And to those who purport to having a crystal ball and be able to predict what will and will not survive 10 years from now, I say nonsense!

 

No body knows what the world will be like 10 years from now.

 

So if the CEO of a (once influential company that is now past its glory days) says something off the record, first he's probably not making an official statement he's speaking off the mic, we are all entitled to our opinions, and second he's on the side of technology, he is promoting it he's heading a significant engine in the technology industry, of course he will say antiquated things like fountain pens will die, what else do we expect him to think, I'm just surprised that the CEO of a company like that should have more balanced vision and not a biased one like it clearly shows.

 

Sorry I got off on a long rant there but maybe we should just keep doing what we do (and that is to keep using our pens every day, and keep a lively community of FP lovers going strong).

 

We shouldn't get all bent out of shape and raise the pitchfork and burn down the town hall over such a blasphemous offense.

[Cryptos]

 

We shouldn't get all bent out of shape and raise the pitchfork and burn down the town hall over such a blasphemous offense.

 

We shouldn't?

 

<puts down pitchfork, looks sheepish, sidles away>

[domnortheast]

 

We shouldn't?

 

<puts down pitchfork, looks sheepish, sidles away>

What? No Rough Music. Doh

[Yaakova]

It's just a thought, but the computer I bought 20 years ago is an obsolete piece of junk full of toxic materials - no longer good for much of anything. On the other hand, the fountain pen I bought 20 years ago still works just find doing the job it was designed to do. Let Microsoft's CEO do the math on that one.

 

Afterthought: A computer is obsolete almost before you get it home and out of the box while a fountain pen can become more valuable and sought after with age.

Edited February 16, 2015 by Yaakova

[jaqcp]

Unless he has plans to murder me, I can think of about a hundred pens with long lives ahead of them.

[abstract49]

He is the CEO of Microsoft, and that qualifies him to judge anything ? I don't know his name.

I never did. His opinion of fountain pens is a flea's fart in a hurricane. I will ignore him.

 

Well said, Sasha Royale!

 

I'll have to remember "flea's fart in a hurricane" next time I need a descriptive for a politician or a priest!

[Nihontochicken]

The pen & ink will be in use after the earth has been laid waste by nuclear war, accident, or global warming.

 

A Canticle For Leibowitz.

[Parker51]

One major problem today is security in regard to passwords. Perhaps Fountain Pens would be a great solution. The machine generates a short sentence on its physically attatched screen, then the user copies it Cursively on a peice of paper with a Fountain Pen, then a physically attatched scanner scans the paper, transmits the data to the machine, which matches it to the generated short sentence, and a model of the users handwriting, and then the machine opens up for operation.