California Typewriter Page #9

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at this stage.

- Right now, I seriously,

really don't have any plans

for selling them now.

There's still more

research I'd like to do

and have the machines for.

- I understand that,

I understand.

- I'd love to see the

collection preserved in a museum

of some type, mechanical museum,

maybe even a typewriter museum.

- [Martin] It's very nice, I

would come visit that museum.

- Oh, love to have you.

- [Martin] I dreamed of

this moment for a long time,

to be sitting and looking at

a Sholes and Glidden typewriter

and knowing it was mine.

(clicking)

My hunt will continue.

(crowd chatter)

I love connecting to the past.

Still yet, the past

is so elusive.

(light piano music)

My typewriter room has some

trappings from my youth.

It's got a fire engine that I

had when I was six years old

and I've got some windup toys

my mother used to bring back

to us from Germany.

(click)

I have a twin brother,

I'll give you my only twin joke.

Now you know what twins are?

They're womb-mates.

That's my dad and mother.

I first experienced

collecting from my parents

collecting these

interesting tools.

My dad would restore them,

cobbler's tools, cooper's tools,

kitchen implements.

- It's an electric comb.

- [Martin] This is our house,

my parents still have that house

that we moved into in 1966.

There was the Dawn River

in the back garden.

We'd build boats, we'd get

a door and put walls around it

and we'd go floating

it on the river.

We had annual lamb roasts,

pretty grand barbecues.

It was a real party house.

This is a pulley ride

down the back garden.

She's 85 years old,

my dad built a zip line

300 feet long from the top

right down to the pine trees

at the bottom of the hill.

And this is

a massive teeter totter

my dad built with a universal

joint in the middle.

A sort of carnival ride.

We built balsa wood gliders,

that's an eight foot

wingspan on that one.

I am capturing my past.

It's there with me,

my past, my room,

my playroom, it's still with me

and I'm very happy to have

them with me in this room now.

(crowd chatter)

(light piano music)

I love to chase the past

and to capture it

the best I can.

The past is a luxurious pursuit

which I've luckily

been able to indulge,

to some extent.

(seagulls chirping)

(light ambient indie)

- I finally sold some work.

A tech CEO from Silicon Valley

had seen the deer and wanted it.

He contacted me and

asked me to install it

in his apartment in San

Francisco while he was away.

It was really good timing.

Just paying people who

I owe money already.

And then the money's all

gone, but it allows me

to move forward a little bit.

I was happy someone

appreciated it.

And that was what I

dreamed about when I moved

from the mountains to the

city, was that at some point,

I'd be installing my work

in a really nice apartment

with a beautiful view

and that my work meant

something to someone.

(clattering)

Bruce Sterling,

the science fiction author,

posted something on

Wired.com about my work

and then Cory Doctorow

started posting stuff of mine

on BoingBoing.

After that I got picked

up by Popular Mechanics,

Gizmodo, Engadget,

a lot of the tech blogs.

(clacking)

Things started to

pick up very quickly.

How many of you recognize

this sound, what is it?

I started getting calls from

people in Silicon Valley.

- How many of you actually

learned how to type

on a typewriter?

High tech people

creating new technologies

who were interested

in buying my work.

This piece is a portrait

bust of Mark Zuckerberg,

the head of Facebook.

Christmas present for

him from a friend.

Hopefully it looks

a little like him.

Mark's eyes are kind

of a little wide set.

The insides of his eyes are

kind of turned up a little bit.

Sometimes I'll get anonymous

hate mails on my website

or comments on

Instagram or Facebook,

where someone's

obviously very upset.

And I'm doin' what I do.

They'd rather see

the typewriter live

than have me make my

crappy artwork or whatever.

They wanna save every typewriter

and that's just not

possible, it's not practical.

And it's not gonna happen.

(soft piano music)

This is the way

that I honor them.

I'd much rather see

them in this state

than sitting on

a shelf collecting dust.

Technology will change us,

we won't be human

in the same way.

We will be a different

kind of human.

This piece is called Thea.

She's the Greek goddess

of sight and light.

It's for Oculus VR,

a company that makes

a virtual reality headset,

called the Oculus Rift.

That's technology that

I've been waiting for

since I was a little kid.

Along with a flying car

and all that other stuff.

This is gonna be hanging

from cables in their office.

In the near future,

there's going to be

a huge split in society.

There'll be one group

who'll have all the money

and power to change their

DNA, augment their bodies

with technology and become

machines that can live forever.

And then there will

be the other group

who will reject all that for

a completely analog life.

Living in nature with

little or no technology

and trying to stay human.

(train horn)

(engine running)

- [Ken] When I was a kid, I

liked everything in the future,

I watched the Jetsons,

I liked Johnny Quest,

you know, 'cause he had

technology, I loved it.

I wanted to be Hadji.

But I'm an adult

now and now I see

what it's really doin' to us.

You know, we had

plants full of workers,

now they're full of robots.

Sometimes we forget

about what happens

when we do have

these innovations,

and the fallout

effect from that.

- Are you at a loss as

a culture if something dies

and nobody appreciates

the death of it?

(soft piano music)

Maybe, maybe not.

- Just like time traveling,

when you're comin' in

here looking at one

of these machines.

They take you back

in a place and time.

You can visualize what

was happening in the '40s

or World War I or

the '60s, if you will,

just by the typewriters

that we work on here

and the era that

they came out in.

(jazz festive music)

So I'm prayin' to God that

we can keep this thing going.

Fingers crossed.

Fingers crossed, I hope

there's a lot of enthusiasts

still out there, you know,

that want their machines fixed.

Yeah, I can do it,

I mean' I'm not braggin',

but I'm damn good.

I am, I am, no brag, just fact.

- Individually,

I think we are a culture,

individually, every

individual is a culture.

But the big picture

of the culture

doesn't make any sense to me.

(festive jazz music)

- [Ken] Yeah.

Here around Christmastime,

we probably do our best work.

When they come in the shop,

it's very nostalgic to 'em.

The typewriter involves

a sense of times gone,

that I think were

a lot less stressful.

Alright, stick you

on back in here,

get you all dolled up.

They're time machines.

I think there's enough

people out there

that can keep us afloat.

But I don't know, I don't know.

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