[nickpeterson]

I’ve had this argument a lot with people. The goal of technology should be to adapt to humans and free up time. I feel like instead we keep asking people to further adapt to the needs of the system/machine. Keyboards are a great example. We should just write as people have done for thousands of years. Machines would then read what we write and understand it and then use that digitized info.

The problem is that it’s quite difficult, and machines decades ago simply couldn’t do that, so now we all type on keyboards all day (digital or physical). It’s reached the point where my children no longer have to learn cursive handwriting in school, because what is the point since everything goes into the computer via a keyboard? This strikes me as incredibly short sighted and backwards. I think it’s hurting us long term.

[nine_k]

> Keyboards are a great example. We should just write as people have done for thousands of years

Nope, nope, nope. Keyboards are a great thing that save a lot of effort and muscle strain. I did my fair share of handwriting, and I experienced the strain and tiredness firsthand (ha). This is to say nothing of the speed.

Ergonomic keyboards make things even easier.

So no, we don't always want faster horses, and the heritage of thousands of years often happens to be a yoke.

[nickpeterson]

I don’t know, I’m pretty dubious that the problems of the future are grossly aided by faster input. I feel like I think better when I write than when I type, I find that really hard to ignore.

[majormajor]

I think and write much better on a modern computer than when writing by hand. And much better than I would on a typewriter.

Don't underestimate the ability to revise multiple times.

At the same time, I design better with a pencil than with Sketchup or LucidCharts or something, for similar "draft then modify" reasons. But that pencil could be "real" on a paper or it could be on a tablet.

[nine_k]

Writing by hand is just slower, so it gives more time to think.

Jotting and doodling, on the other hand, is important to improve thinking, from my experience. It's just mostly not about text.

[h_r]

I have mixed feelings about the various arguments I see raised in the comments. It seems crazy to me to insist that efficiency and productivity gains via technology have, as their proper goal, a world in which none of that matters. Freeing up time in this way benefits us as individuals as well. Just staying alive and entertaining ourselves requires goal-directed behavior. I like not having to spend hours cooking food daily on an open fire.

Your argument about keyboards struck me in just this way - it's a mistake to assume that we should stick with the status quo and have machines adapt to us. After all, writing on paper (or with a digital stylus) is just another iteration of improving the technology. Nobody wants to pound symbols into stone with a chisel, for example.

I can type much faster than I can write cursively and it would be incredibly painful to revert to such writing. Natural language speech input can improve a lot of things vs typing, but I think writing code - for as long as it lasts - would be tricky to implement well using our voices.

[layer8]

Physical keyboards are at a near optimum for symbolic input, for the same reason that many musical instruments are operated by keys, and the standard interface for entering notes is a (musical) keyboard. Due to how our fingers work and having ten of them, this is the most efficient and precise way for humans to enter symbolic information.

[ruined]

you're shortsighted—handwriting also is a technological compromise.

natural language interaction is perhaps the main focus of modern machine learning research.