Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!isishq!doug From: doug@isishq.FIDONET.ORG (Doug Thompson) Newsgroups: comp.society.futures Subject: Re: Walkman computers Message-ID: <1283.23DA039E@isishq.FIDONET.ORG> Date: 21 Jan 89 23:21:30 GMT Organization: International Student Information Service -- Headquarters Lines: 90 Portable walkman computers with video displays in eye-glasses . . . tiny keyboards you can use with one hands . . . voice synthesizers . . Such a device would be a very different machine than the machine I'm using to write this . . . *This* is an electronic typewriter for all intents and purposes. I sit at a desk, I peck away at a keyboard and watch my words materialize before me. The actual experience of writing is not a whole lot different than the experience of writing at a typewriter. Of course this machine mails the message to all of you with no special effort. That makes this machine a lot different. But if I were not sitting at the desk doing something to make words appear on screen (paper) the instrument would be different. Heck, I can't carry on a conversation with my wife while writing. This may be Gerald Forditis, not being able to walk down the street and chew gum at the same time. :-) Point is, that full concentration is required for a communication, even if it is a *spoken* communication. When you are having a serious conversation with someone, you aren't doing much of anything else. Either your mind is on the conversation, and you are paying a lot of attention to what you're saying and what you're hearing or you aren't having a serious conversation. I often walk to the store, buy a newspaper, and am inclined to start reading it while walking home. Dangerous! I can do it, but one is liable to bumb into other people, or autos. Riding the train, one can already use one's portable "briefcase" computer. Would the walkman make a lot of difference? Can eyeglasses with visual display devices really do a whole lot better than a good laptop screen? Possibly . . . but it would still occupy one's entire attention, and except for the possibility of taking a smaller machine where a bigger one could not go (the difference between a 35mm camera and a 4 x 5 camera) it doesn't profoundly change the device, methinks. Either you are reading documents and creating documents, or you are doing something else. For people who are mobile, the mobile computer has its advantages. I'm not very mobile and it's very rare that I want to take a computer with me. There are computers at home and computers and work. Whenever I want to sit down and read or write (or sometimes even work) there is always a computer nearby. Whether a large desktop PC or a laptop would make no difference to me. And I won't be reading e-mail while walking down the street no matter what technology is made available. I won't do it at the dinner table, and I wouldn't do it driving in city traffic. A Dvorak keyboard increases typing speed by a factor of two, I think. Anyone who uses a computer a lot quickly gets a pretty good typing speed. Mine's about 70 wpm on a recent test. Dvorak would make that 140. That is getting to the low range of normal speech (or normal speech if you live in the sooooowwwwuuuuuth. As computer communication and use becomes more significant to more people, more people will have vastly improved typing speeds. Kids in school might be using keyboards before they are using pencils before too long. This would suggest that the keyboard is an adequate interface. It can be enhanced and somewhat improved, but not really by orders of magnitude. Generally I can type just about as fast as I can think or speak. When the printing press was invented, a lot more people started to learn to read and write. So the computer will increase the number of folk who can type. I don't really think there will be huge gains in verbal data input. =Doug -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Fido 1:221/162 -- 1:221/0 280 Phillip St., UUCP: !watmath!isishq!doug Unit B-4-11 DAS: [DEZCDT]doug Waterloo, Ontario Bitnet: fido@water Canada N2L 3X1 Internet: doug@isishq.math.fidonet.org (519) 746-5022 ------------------------------------------------------------------------