Joan Didion on computers

I love reading Joan Didion's essays and novels. I regularly feel the need to read On Self-Respect or Goodbye to All That, some sections of which bring a lump to my throat they are so full of truth (my truth).

I also love listening to Joan Didion's voice. So posed, almost bored. I recently found this 1987 interview with Don Swaim for CBS radio, where the conversation somehow lead to this question: 'What sort of computer do you use?'

In 1987, that was an interesting question, and it brought an interesting answer, and a discussion about crying learning to use a laptop, how literal you have to be when dealing with a computer and the value of spell checker. How quaint!



Joan Didion
I have a little laptop... I am so crazy about it. I cried for 3 weeks trying to learn... because I thought I'd do it, I'd learn it and it was so hard, and it was so irritating, so frustrating, but at the same time I knew it was much easier to use, if I knew how to use it, than a typewriter. So I couldn't really go back to the typewriter, but I couldn't learn this, so it was a whole.. crisis. [laughs]

Don Swaim
Oh yeah people don't realise it. They say 'I'm gonna make my life better as a writer with a computer' and then they find out you have to learn the computer in the same way that you have to learn
how to type. Well first you have to learn to type before you can learn the computer: people who don't know how to type have to learn that, and THEN they have to learn the computer on top of it, so it takes... it's like half a year of education!

Joan Didion
You know how literal it is. It is much more literal than anything I've ever had any dealings with, anything or anybody. And it's quite a new way for me to think, I mean to adjust to something so literal, that will do exactly what you tell it, if you tell it in unmistakably clear terms. Most of our dealing are more... we tend to shortcut them you know: we tend to talk in shorthand and to give directions in shorthand. It's like people dictating letters and saying 'Sincerely etc'. A lot of our dealings with other people, with most machines, are 'Sincerely etc', but with the computer you have to do it all. the. way. I mean it's a whole different way of thinking... yeah... quite interesting.

Don Swaim
Does it have a spell checker?

Joan Didion
It has, yeah, all that stuff.

Don Swaim
That's sensational, isn't it?

Joan Didion
Yeah

Don Swaim
If you take a novel, you can change the name of a character, John to Bob, you press a button and it does it all the way through!

Joan Didion
Spell checker is a little irritating because it is so literal that it stops at every... stops and gives a query on every word it doesn't know, and it doesn't know a lot of words.

Don Swaim
Well if you're using a Xined (?) laptop, it probably doesn't have too much memory, so it has a spell checker that has a dictionary of maybe 40,000 words, which is not very big.

Joan Didion
... whatever the word-perfect dictionary is...

Don Swaim
I use Microsoft Word and it has a dictionary of 90,000 words, which is one of the larger dictionaries: that's really helpful. Also another thing this one does and it didn't do before, it will list plurals.

Joan Didion
Oh really?

Don Swaim
You might write fathers: it wouldn't let you go by fathers. because it's not in the dictionary, because it's a plural. But the new dictionary allows that.


You can download the whole interview in mp3 here.