As if in homage to dot-matrix printers (younger readers, look it up) and to this excellent book, the FedEx delivery slip that came with my copy was in a familiar, slightly fuzzy, greyish typeface on lined paper with holes down the side. The book, too, has (printed) sprocket holes as an inside cover design motif.

Ah, the joy of that old technology! Greys and pale greens—the colors of an ex-East German picnic set. Clacks and whirs. Misalignments. As alluring as a teletype machine but cheaper. An absence of aura, at least not the aura of glossiness that today comes with every reinvention of the mechanical in the age of its interactionalist exploitability, a patina of technological determinism and self-delusion sprayed onto valueadded insults to the intelligence. No, not always, of course. But too often. The virtual door, the actually blowing wind, the animated bird, the valise of certainty (multiversal answers...

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