The inexorable
march of
TECHNOLOGY
I
by Roger Moroney
will start this scrawl with three well-worn
words. Wait a minute... that’s ten words.
It’s difficult at times to get one’s regular
column under full steam so I shall try again,
and point out that the three well-worn words
we would all have used at some stage of
our evolution will follow this sentence.
How things change.
That’s better. Life, basically, is all about change.
It’s like time...it does not stand still. Life
and time are the ingredients of that
thing called evolution, and progress
for that matter. Things change.
Crikey, now we’re down to two words.
Although since 1984 I sort of
loosely worked out that through the
regular columns and past features
and race reports for this marvellous
motorcycling messenger called
Kiwi Rider I’ve probably jotted
out about half a million words.
Before that I crunched out stories
and reports for New Zealand
Motorcycle News going back to the
70s before joining Pete (Vege) and
John (Nick) for an ale somewhere and
embarking on the most enjoyable
of writing eras with them.
I had a fine old typewriter and was most
adept at replacing the ribbon every few
months, and only twice had to re-start a
story after spilling lager over the bloody
thing. I was also adept at bashing out
stories using just two fingers...and I still
only use the two forefingers today.
Eventually I got a small Casio
electric typewriter and rather
pompously considered myself to be
Mr Technology. The copy it produced
was very clear and crisp and because
you wrote a line at a time, before it
actually printed that line, you got to correct the
errors without a single drop of Twink being used.
So yep, I’d type out the race reports onto paper
and then take them down to the Post Office and
fax them off (fax... wow!) to some poor bugger at
KR HQ who then had to compose them into print.
Now I sit here and dab away at the well-worn
black plastic keys on a flat slab of plastic which
is about the size of a flattened loaf of bread.
Technology is now a part of all our lives,
motorcycling magazines included