I am an avid fan of television detective shows. Not the rough and tumble shows where someone is always hitting someone or shooting at someone. But rather, if you will excuse the expression, the more “intellectual” ones where most of the action takes place in a sophisticated crime lab and most of the action consists of people looking through a microscope or checking the readout from a mass spectrometer. However, even in the second, and to me higher-level category, at some point, you are almost bound to see members of the constabulary banging on the front door of a house and shouting, “Police! Open up!” Then instantaneously smash through the door, guns drawn and ready for action.

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Say the word “keyboard” and people today almost invariably think “computer.” This is because today most people use a keyboard only in connection with a computer or computer-based devices (laptops, tablets, iPads, iPhones, etc.). The fact is, keyboards predate the computer and its derivatives by many centuries, being parts of specialized machines used for specialized purposes. However, public awareness of keyboards only began with the development of the first commercially successful typewriter in 1868.

The change in society wrought via the typewriter, of which keyboards were an integral part, was truly monumental. This is why the keyboard unquestionably deserves a place of honor on the list of what I like to call “extraordinary ordinary things.”

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The purpose of the “Extraordinary Ordinary Things” series of blogs is to highlight that certain things have become so embedded in daily life that we hardly ever think about them, and then to show how they are really dramatically remarkable. Frequently, examination of a particular extraordinary ordinary thing opens the door to a much broader concept whose effects on society are virtually incalculable. This is the case here with the TV remote control, specifically, and the virtually all-encompassing concept of remote control in general.

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