“The innervation of commanding fingers”

Walter Benjamin on handwriting and the typewriter:

The typewriter will alienate the hand of the man of letters from the pen only when the precision of typographic forms has directly entered the conception of his books. One might suppose that new systems with more variable typefaces would then be needed. They will replace the pliancy of the hand with the innervation of commanding fingers.

“Teaching Aid,” in One-Way Street , trans. Edmund Jephcott (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2016).

Commanding fingers: more prescient than Benjamin could have imagined. ⌘P.

Related reading
All OCA handwriting posts (Pinboard)
Benjamin on collectors : Metaphors for writing : On readers and writers : On writing materials