The copy machine in the basement of this newspaper's building is a 1994 unit the size of a snowmobile, and it is being taken away on Tuesday, which is why this issue smells faintly of toner and grief.

It is easy to mock the copier — the jams, the burning smell, the service contract priced like a ransom. But the copier was the only machine in the office that democratized anything. It did not ask who you were. Twenty-nine cents and a master and you were a publisher; the zine underground of three decades ran entirely on machines nobody was supposed to use for that.[1]

Twenty-nine cents and a master and you were a publisher.BASEMENT EULOGY

Its replacement is a cloud-based document solution, which means the office now prints through a login, a license, and a server in a state none of us have visited. The new system has never jammed, because a jam requires paper, and paper is now a compliance event. The copier dies undefeated. It only ever asked for paper and produced more paper. RIP to a real one.[2]

NOTES & ERRATA — FILED BY THE DESK

  1. The FBI once maintained a file on photocopier misuse by dissident publishers. The machines kept no logs. Try that with a cloud-based document solution. ↩
  2. The portraits on our authors page are made on this machine's surviving sibling. The aesthetic is not nostalgia; it is inheritance. ↩