To BYOK or Not to BYOK

There’s a whole cottage industry/subculture around “distraction-free writing devices” or “writing decks”—digital typewriters. The idea behind them is that if you’re writing on a gadget with no internet connectivity, no social media, no games, something that you can only type on, it’s going to sharpen your focus. On the face of it, it’s not a bad idea: the truth is, I get distracted pretty easily. When I’m stuck on something, it’s far too easy to start checking Mastodon (or, if this was a decade ago, Twitter), or email, or browse the web listlessly. But many writing decks have dubious ergonomics; many have weird keyboards; some are surprisingly large; some make getting files off of them a capital-A Adventure; nearly all rival a lower-end iPad in price. But, then came the BYOK. The name is an acronym for “Bring Your Own Keyboard,” and that’s the key difference between it and, well, nearly about everything else: it’s a display, a basic text editor, and the support firmware. That’s it.…

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