—How was this technology introduced into your life?

Crane: My mom, my stepmom, and both of my grandmothers were extremely skilled seamstresses, and taught me when I was in grade school.

Dahlie: I’m not sure when the roller ball was actually developed and available to the public, but I am sure that young people in London didn’t generally know about it until 1979. In 1979, my class had a project involving speculations about what might happen if we were stranded on a deserted island. My essay dealt with inventive ways to catch fish, but I couldn’t get through more than a few lines without an unforgivable smudge. Since the essays were to be glued to white cardboard placards and displayed for parents’ night, no mistake would be tolerated. Sensing my desperation, a very unusual and deeply sympathetic teacher said she had something that might help me, namely a blue ink roller ball. It seemed impossible that such a thing would be allowed, but I was desperate, and used the roller ball to finish my work (incredibly, I was even allowed to take it home that night).

D’Souza: I just spent five months in Hokkaido, Japan, studying Ainu storytelling. My hotel in Tokyo had a deluxe Washlet, and my apartment in Hokkaido had one, too. Of the two, the one in my apartment was much better because it also had a sink at the top of the toilet. When you'd flush, the water that would refill the tank would first run down from a spigot and into this sink, which was also the top of the tank. It was a really elegant design. So you could rinse off your hands with the water that would go into the next flush. So obvious and so good for the environment. In fact, my whole toilet/tub/shower bathroom system was state of the art. My tub pre-heated my bathwater according to a timer, my shower was also a steam room, and my toilet played music. There was a little TV built into the wall with a non-steam screen. My toilet and I watched Wimbledon together like that this summer. Everything in there was made of durable plastic and everything had a digital console with a lot of buttons. I felt like I was on a space station.

Scibona: In the normal way. It perched in the corner of the living room, peering down on me and my family with “suave malice” (as I think Halldór Laxness writes of a barn cat). When it was on, it seemed like the whole living world, which would have made me, watching from outside it, dead. Right?

—What was the immediate impact of this technology on your life?

Crane: We didn't have a lot of money when I was young, and my mother sewed me (and my dolls) some beautiful clothes from the time I was little through maybe fourth grade—I had a lot of clothes that were of course, better than most store-bought clothes. For special occasions, she continued to sew me things as long as she was alive—my high-school graduation dress, a bridesmaid dress that eventually became my wedding dress, she even reupholstered a sofa of mine, and I continue to sew myself, on my grandmother's 35-year old sewing machine, although my skills are nowhere near as advanced. I still live on a pretty modest budget, and have made curtains, quilts, and simple garments for myself frequently over the years—I enjoy it, it's practical, and it gives me a great feeling of pride.

Dahlie: These pens were actually somewhat expensive, and since I was afraid to own up to using one, I didn’t ask my parents for the money. Instead, I saved a portion of my allowance for a few weeks and eventually raised the cash I needed to get one. For my in-class work, of course, it made no impact, since I couldn’t be seen with such a pen. But it made a difference with my homework. I used the pen sparingly, however—a very detailed and expert inspection of roller ball handwriting would, in fact, allow a teacher to determine what I was doing, and I was always afraid of getting caught.

D’Souza: The first pleasure was the surprise of the warm toilet seat after a long flight and on an otherwise cold day. And the second pleasure was being washed so clean by the toilet after doing #2 that I would definitely eat spaghetti in a thick ragu sauce off of myself. Look, the point is the thing gets you clean. It just makes smearing around with paper seem so disgusting now.

Scibona: Because to watch it required sitting still and made me feel as abstracted from my mind as from my feelings, my body, and all physical sensation, it trained me to confuse sitting still with death. As I got older and was allowed to make more of my own decisions, I simply left it on all the time. Someone once told me that if you go on vacation and leave your dog with a fifty-pound bag of kibble, your dog, unable to abstain, will have eaten itself to death by the time you return. I could not stop watching—not because I was interested, but because my capacity for interest itself was being destroyed. I was experiencing veleity—volition at its most feeble. My will was poisoned.
During one junior-high summer, I would watch until five or six in the morning and sleep until one in the afternoon. Even at the time I knew there was little difference between what I was doing and a narcotic addiction.