a kind of television with a keyboard

“We locked our­selves in her of­fice and sat at the com­puter, a kind of tele­vi­sion with a key­board, very dif­fer­ent from what she had showed me and the chil­dren some time be­fore. She pressed the power but­ton, she slid dark rec­tan­gles into gray blocks. I waited, be­wil­dered. On the screen lu­mi­nous tremors ap­peared. Lila began to type on the key­board, I was speech­less. It was in no way com­pa­ra­ble to a type­writer, even an elec­tric one. With her fin­ger­tips she ca­ressed gray keys, and the writ­ing ap­peared silently on the screen, green like newly sprouted grass. What was in her head, at­tached to who knows what cor­tex of the brain, seemed to pour out mirac­u­lously and fix it­self on the void of the screen. It was power that, al­though pass­ing for act, re­mained power, an elec­tro­chem­i­cal stim­u­lus that was in­stantly trans­formed into light. It seemed to me like the writ­ing of God as it must have been on Sinai at the time of the Com­mand­ments, im­pal­pa­ble and tremen­dous, but with a con­crete ef­fect of pu­rity. Mag­nif­i­cent, I said.”

(Elena Ferrante, The Story of the Lost Child, trans. Ann Goldstein, chapter 101, p. 289.)

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