The last part of my technological biography starts with me buying a fountain pen right before I came back to college. It was a transparent case of me fixating on some small particularity in order to distract myself from a larger anxiety—an even more extreme example would be that I taught myself how to stitch book bindings because I couldn't find the sort of notebook I used to like—but in retrospect I'm glad that I did it. I've taken something like eleven hundred pages of notes with it.

It turned out to be lucky that I had it. During my first month back at school I became (1) incredibly reliant on writing things down, and (2) unable to use a normal pen legibly. I have a medical condition (not a serious one, don't worry) that led, in combination with some medication, to me having tremors in my hands. I could hold things very lightly, but if I gripped with any degree of force (as you grip a ballpoint pen) my fingers would flutter. It also led to some changes in brain function; I experienced what's technically called "a decrease in cognitive performance." So I lost quite rapidly a lot of my ability recall facts from long-term memory, and "thinking" became a little slower and more difficult. The way that I compensated was by writing everything down. I took notes, obviously, but I also started thinking on paper. I couldn't hold complex ideas in my head like I used to; I started being very reliant on writing out what I was thinking, connecting it with lines, diagrams, etc.

If you've never used a good fountain pen (good is not the same as expensive), it feels incredibly effortless. I could still write with one even when my hand problems made my handwriting with other implements look like a seismograph reading. The one thing that I don't like about fountain pens, though, is that their functional value has been completely eclipsed in society by their role as status objects. Want to see something disgusting? Go look at this forum thread where a bunch of guys practically drool over a $1600 Japanese pen that looks like it came from a Vegas gift-shop. The poster photographs it next to his even-more-expensive watch, because shiny objects go together, I guess. The fountain pen that I used to do the drawing and handwriting for this site cost $6—counting shipping. I fill it with excellent but modestly-priced ink from a recyclable glass container.

At any rate, this is the situation in which I find myself: I need to Put Words On Paper in order to write and in order to think. That's the end-point of my technoautobiography; I've discovered that I'm completely reliant on a technology for which we've collectively abandoned the most direct (and also most elegant) methods.