Plus ca change…

From a letter to a UK business journal, published on 29 March 1980:

Your article on new technology prompts me to take time off from phoning our purveyor of electric typewriters with yet another complaint about his technological masterpiece.

Last time it was the ribbons that spattered black spots on the paper. This time it insists on producing a question mark instead of a Y, but there may be some logic in that. We have been through chewed-up cartridge tapes too.

Talk by smart salesmen concerning “the new technology that you cannot do without, otherwise you are still in the quill-pen era” is therefore viewed with a jaundiced eye. Any new wonder aid will simply be something else to go wrong, and all the time saved will be dissipated on more irate calls to get specialist attention. When the old Underwood got a paper clip in it, anyone could clear it.