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| Hearsay: |
How will we change when our keyboards, anachronisms of analog culture, change? What will happen to our brains? Will they be tastier or repulsive to the coming zombie hordes? Someone needs to ask these questions, people.
Among the 20th-century activities our muscles can’t forget is typing on a qwerty keyboard. And though most people who type now don’t know the meaning of a typebar jam — much less the inky aggravation — the configuration of characters that begins with the row q-w-e-r-t-y-u-i-o-p, first marketed for typewriters in 1874 to reduce such jams, is still the most common configuration in the world for English-language keyboards.
For 136 years, then, typing in English has meant making certain neurological associations. Words exist in our minds and on our tongues, but they also live in our hands and fingers. Anyone who types envisions and feels words in space, and for English speakers who use technology, this space is defined by the qwerty keyboard. Who knows what qwerty has done to the language — even to modes of thought — by attaching meaning to certain constellations? Deep in our typist-minds, G and H are centrally located and somehow siblings; X and Z are southwestern outliers; and Q is always followed by . . . W.
But maybe qwerty is finally on its way out.
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August 16th, 2010 at 2:22 pm
Qwerty must live. And speaking of the past, even the misery of
blowing White-Out built in more time for revision and reflection.
Slow is good.
August 16th, 2010 at 9:09 pm
Oo. I’m not sure I could learn a new keyboard now. Let it be some kind of new-fangled thing for the youngsters.
August 17th, 2010 at 12:05 pm
I resent your ill timed between the lines attempt at sabotaging my opening night party for ‘Bills Typewriter Repair’. A franchise that you very well know I’ve worked quite hard on and taken years to unveil. In addition we are introducing Canadian made type writers which will further drive the Canadian carbon paper industry.
August 18th, 2010 at 1:46 pm
QWERTY is in my soul. All I need is a trip to Europe to reaffirm that: most of the letters are in the same place on the keyboards one encounters in internet places, but there are just enough differences to make typing a nightmare.
However, since I learned how to type with all 10 fingers in a high school class–and nobody learns that way now, I think, although everybody can type in one fashion or another–perhaps it would be easier for younger, hunt-and-peck typists to switch.