Will's post about his comment spam and calling it "wastes of electrons" got me thinking this morning. I've always wondered about those poor, wasted electrons in unsent messages, but especially in typed-then-deleted characters and words.

I'm a fast but not terribly accurate typist; my fingers tend to get ahead of themselves. I know that I'm making the mistake even as I am in the process of bringing my finger down on the key, and I am swift and terrible with the delete key. It's rare for me to find a typo later. I think about all the times I've typed "u-n-i-v-e-r-i-s-t-y-[delete]-[delete]-[delete]-[delete]-s-i-t-y" — the last twelve keystrokes have actually become integral to my representation of that word. The "i-s-t-y" was here for such a brief and shining moment, then poof! Gone. Where does it go? Is there a special corner of the universe for aborted typings? A place where hundreds of thousands of iterations of the "d-n" in "adn" and the "b-i-l-e" in "terrbile" (as I originally typed above) and the "n-i-g" in "havnig" and the lonely "y" in the "my" that was intended to be a "me" get together and mourn their fate? Or are they out there partying together, reveling in their freedom from permanence, having Dionysian one-night stands in which they recombine into interesting new words such as "biledny" and "nigbile" and "ynig"? I'd love to know.
- posted by Lori @ 10:19:00 AM | permanent link | |