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From: brendan@batserver.cs.uq.oz.au (Brendan Mahony)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Re: Sony Palmtop w/char recognition - Ultimate Laptop?
Message-ID: <3237@moondance.cs.uq.oz.au>
Date: 12 Apr 90 02:02:28 GMT
References: <18720@boulder.Colorado.EDU> <1463@uvm-gen.UUCP> <19307@boulder.Colorado.EDU> <54020@microsoft.UUCP> <3223@moondance.cs.uq.oz.au> <1990Apr11.060139.1330@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
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conte@crest.csg.uiuc.edu (Tom Conte) writes:

>The Dvorak keyboard was supposed to solve the speed problem of the QWERTY
>keyboard layout [the QWERTY keyboard was designed to *slow* *down* typing
>speed, as the first typewriters were mechanical and would jam at high speeds
>-- at least the way I heard it, if this is a myth, let me know].  The
>Dvorak never caught on.  It wasn't that much of an improvement in speed
>to justify the learning time needed.  I predict that the situation for
>handwriting interfaces will not be popular for the above reason: no increase
>(in fact a decrease) in speed.  Note this is not true if the user is writing

Handwriting won't replace keyboard input because of the learning time
needed? Interesting proposition, especially in illiterate USA.

You cunningly omit the main thrust of my argument, that most people
do not need the extra speed of the typewriter keyboard. It is the extra
speed of the keyboard whose improvement in speed is hard to justify the
learning time needed. You have to teach people to write, or they'll
never learn to read, but you don't have to teach them to type. Only
data input professionals need that sort of speed, and most of them would be
out of business if the computer could read the scrawled memo's of
executives etc.

>Other input devices will come.  The mouse was an experimental toy until
>Smalltalk and the Alto, and eventually the Lisa/Macintosh put it on all of
>our desks.  The five-key chorded keyboard never made it outside Xerox PARC,
>sadly.  The `glove' is coming.

>Some day, the implant.

You may want the computer to be an intrusion and an inconvenience in your
life, but me I want the computer to do the work and make it easier for
me to do things better, not differently.

--
Brendan Mahony                   | brendan@batserver.cs.uq.oz       |
Department of Computer Science   |
University of Queensland         |
Australia                        |