For some time now, my TikTok algorithm has been suggesting-as if I were not responsible for this-content from a creator who assembles, reviews, and collects computer keyboards. The combination of truly amazing designs, perfect color stakes in the keys, and those ASMR videos that make you feel how precise the “click” is keeps me glued to that content.
The keyboards that are handled in this new dream profile of mine are not the ultra-modern, flat, monotonous ones of the new Macs, but harken back to the early PC models, where the keys were high and the clicking noisy to boot.
After all, the keyboard is a technological element that has changed little in relation to improvements in technology. With appropriate differences, the key pattern has remained the same and only a few symbols have been introduced over the decades. The historical fascination with keyboards, however, must have struck not only me, or the creator who has found in me a very solid follower, but also the designer and writer Marcin Wichary, who has devoted a new 1200-page book to the subject.

Wichary wanted to trace the history of an object that became commonplace with the invention of computers, but was already present in early typewriters. A seven-year research from which 1,300 photographs were collected, including of very rare pieces, cornerstones for the history of technology and that of design.
Between nostalgia for the analog world and hyper positivity for a future made of AI and crypto-things, between the pages are such cult objects as the IBM Model M keyboard, the 1901 Underwood No. 5, and the splendid design of the Olivetti Praxis 48.
The book, titled “Shift Happens,” is available for pre-order on Kickstarter.