Snobbery and decay

I found this channel on youtube and thought I would leave it here in case anyone else may find it interesting as I did.

It certainly made me go Hmmmmmm.

5 Likes

The downfall of Olivetti

1 Like

The company was way too pro worker at the time and a threat to the typical corporate business model.

2 Likes

The documentary mentions an assassination of the Chinese computer scientist that took over the company, possibly CIA involvement. General Electric then bought the business after it collapsed?

1 Like

Abandoned Steelworks

1 Like

Well the CIA does the bidding of transnational corporate business. Eliminating competition to have only a select few technology companies to foster easy control comes to mind. Italy is also birthplace of the Club of Rome and all that their goals entail. There was mention of them selling products to the Soviet Union so the Chinese connection makes business sense. The company was socialist in regards to employment benefits. Italy was supposedly quite friendly to communism. The Black Nobility considers Italy their outpost.

3 Likes

Thank you, I will do some more reading on the Black Nobility. So many books of Dr Farrellā€™s I have yet to read, Iā€™m sure he covers this in FVOV.

1 Like
1 Like

i really enjoy a couple of people on twitter who go in hard for meltology* - starting to look at how abandoned places age.

*fun stuff. red bricks peeking out of places they shouldnā€™t. inexplicable ā€œrepairā€ patches. building in/under/around solid rocks in stupid places. ā€œnaturalā€ arches and grottos and caves. how fast an abandoned subway space can start to look like a ā€œcaveā€ or a ā€œmine.ā€ clearly melted buildings. rocks and mountains called ā€œcastles.ā€
requires a fun - geology as taught is silliness. stratification and time measurements are self-reinforcing. how many years of river running did it take to carve the grand canyon. are you sure? historical time badly, intentionally mis-told.

2 Likes
1 Like
2 Likes
1 Like

Ahh Olivetti.
I learned typing on a beautiful black Olivetti typewriter in highschool in 1982. The whole class was full with typewriters, 2 hours a week. We first had to do finger excersises with our arms up, and then we could begin. All those ping sounds of the typewriters.
My parents bough a portable typewriter but it was not the same and nice as the Olivettiā€™s.

2 Likes

They seemed to be unstoppable, the Apple of Europe and also reminds me of Xerox Parc and the early experiments they did there. I love old power stations for some reason, my father worked on turbines at Vickers so maybe I still have his engines.

Yes I remember them as a premium brand. There a was mixture of brands in the typewriter classroom, both manual and electric, with the idea of being able use both when encountered on the job. An interesting side of the class was learning the form and composition of various business letters. My first job included typing up business letters to accompany mechanical engineering job bids along with making copies of the blueprints.

1 Like

I am only 42 but I have had some weird jobs; one of the more interesting ones was typing a lawyerā€™s correspondence on his typewriter for him. He had a little office above a bank. I guess I was in high school. Donā€™t recall the brand of the machine but it was pretty cool. Only a temp job.

I have a manual typewriter at home I used to write poetry and short stories on. Instant printing! lol

My mom was nice enough to refurbish it and gift it for my birthday one year. I believe itā€™s a Smith Corona. Has itā€™s own little case. I got 2 new ribbons for it off ebay or maybe Amazon i cant remember, a few years or so ago. :slight_smile: They make all sorts of vintage refill stuff in China .

3 Likes

ā€¦ Aaahhh the glories of Elite. :slight_smile:

I purchased my first typewriter when I was about eight years old (about 1961) by selling garden and flower seeds. Once the seeds were sold (mostly to family and friends of the family) the deal was to return the money and you could purchase a prize. I choose a typewriter. When it arrived it was a metal box that only looked like a typewriter. :face_with_hand_over_mouth: it did not typeā€¦ hard to believe scammers did that to kids who probably didnā€™t read the fine print or maybe was none! Later in life learned to get my cut in dollars, not silly prizes.
I remember the portable Smith-Corona typewriters in a case.

2 Likes

oh no!! Was this ā€˜typewriterā€™ from a mail order ad in the back of a magazine? Thatā€™s terrible.
That is societal decay right there.

1 Like

Right next to the X-ray specsā€¦Denied!

Miss being a kid. Oh, the thinks you can thinkā€¦