Amish for QWERTY
by Cory Doctorow07/09/2003
I learned to type before I learned to write. The QWERTY keyboard layout is hard-wired to my brain, such that I can't write anything of significance without that I have a 101-key keyboard in front of me. This has always been a badge of geek pride: unlike the creaking pen-and-ink dinosaurs that I grew up reading, I'm well adapted to the modern reality of technology. There's a secret elitist pride in touch-typing on a laptop while staring off into space, fingers flourishing and caressing the keys.
But last week, my pride got pricked. I was brung low by a phone. Some very nice people from Nokia loaned me a very latest-and-greatest camera-phone, the kind of gadget I've described in my science fiction stories. As I prodded at the little 12-key interface, I felt like my father, a 60s-vintage computer scientist who can't get his wireless network to work, must feel. Like a creaking dino. Like history was passing me by. I'm 31, and I'm obsolete. Or at least Amish.
People think the Amish are technophobes. Far from it. They're ideologues. They have a concept of what right-living consists of, and they'll use any technology that serves that ideal -- and mercilessly eschew any technology that would subvert it. There's nothing wrong with driving the wagon to the next farm when you want to hear from your son, so there's no need to put a phone in the kitchen. On the other hand, there's nothing right about your livestock dying for lack of care, so a cellphone that can call the veterinarian can certainly find a home in the horse barn.
For me, right-living is the 101-key, QWERTY, computer-centric mediated lifestyle. It's having a bulky laptop in my bag, crouching by the toilets at a strange airport with my AC adapter plugged into the always-awkwardly-placed power source, running software that I chose and installed, communicating over the wireless network. I use a network that has no incremental cost for communication, and a device that lets me install any software without permission from anyone else. Right-living is the highly mutated, commodity-hardware- based, public and free Internet. I'm QWERTY-Amish, in other words.
I'm the kind of perennial early adopter who would gladly volunteer to beta test a neural interface, but I find myself in a moral panic when confronted with the 12-button keypad on a cellie, even though that interface is one that has been greedily adopted by billions of people worldwide, from strap-hanging Japanese schoolgirls to Kenyan electoral scrutineers to Filipino guerrillas in the bush. The idea of paying for every message makes my hackles tumesce and evokes a reflexive moral conviction that text-messaging is inherently undemocratic, at least compared to free-as-air email. The idea of only running the software that big-brother telco has permitted me on my handset makes me want to run for the hills.
The thumb-generation who can tap out a text-message under their desks while taking notes with the other hand -- they're in for it, too. The pace of accelerated change means that we're all of us becoming wed to interfaces -- ways of communicating with our tools and our world -- that are doomed, doomed, doomed. The 12-buttoners are marrying the phone company, marrying a centrally controlled network that requires permission to use and improve, a Stalinist technology whose centralized choke points are subject to regulation and the vagaries of the telcos. Long after the phone companies have been out-competed by the pure and open Internet (if such a glorious day comes to pass), the kids of today will be bound by its interface and its conventions.
The sole certainty about the future is its Amishness. We will all bend our brains to suit an interface that we will either have to abandon or be left behind. Choose your interface -- and the values it implies -- carefully, then, before you wed your thought processes to your fingers' dance. It may be the one you're stuck with.
Cory Doctorow is the co-editor of Boing Boing and the Outreach Coordinator for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Return to the Wireless DevCenter
You must be logged in to the O'Reilly Network to post a talkback.
Showing messages 1 through 7 of 7.
-
We just don't know it - the Disney theory
2003-07-14 18:04:09 anonymous2 [Reply | View]
At Siggraph in 1994 (sketches) a Finnish guy told us about his experience during the '93 conference in Orlando. This is bad becasue I can't remember the presenter's name. He was at Adventure Land and his kids insisted on taking him to the arcade where they have games some of which are about 100 yrs old. As he stood on the plate and gripped the strength tester - you know, the scale from wimpy to manly? he realized that the interface today is the same as it was 100 years ago. The presentation was short. He just pointed it out, chatted a bit about what was out on the floor, and stepped down. What we have now, what you know now, all the stuff we are thinking about buying is pointlessly bad.
bob_c@emailnerd.com
-
Why learn just one interface?
2003-07-11 10:43:18 rzazueta [Reply | View]
I see what you're saying, but I think there's one major problem: we're never married to a single interface. I think a lot of the struggle to adapt comes from a certain fear of new technologies and change. It's a mental bandwidth issue for a lot of folks - why should I go through the trouble of learning how to use my PDA when my Day Runner still works?
But learning a new interface for something we're already familiar with, i.e. entering alphanumeric data, requires far less bandwidth. Even less when you consider that the idea of spelling words with numbers on a keypad has been around since the early days of the phone. It's not a radical shift in how things work, like the shift between PDA and Day Runner (how do you flip pages in a PDA?), it's just in how the data is entered.
Most folks interact just fine with the various data exchange interfaces they come across on a daily basis. There's typing, scrawling, talking, body language, symbols and non-verbal sounds. All of these are exceptionally complex, yet we're built to memetically driven, so that won't stand in oru way. I think you'll get the hang of the new phone interface in no time. I know I have, and I'm a 28-year-old geek who's been married to the 101-key board since I was 10. -
Why learn just one interface?
2003-07-14 00:10:41 anonymous2 [Reply | View]
I've already learned Dvorak for full-keyboard PCs and two different input methods (Graffiti and TapType) for my PDA. My next PDA will likely have either one of those thumb-QWERTY keyboards (which I loathe; they are easily the worst of all possible input methods) or a Graffiti/Fitaly combo. I eschew the phone input not because I don't think I can master it -- what's to master? it's a phone keypad! -- but because trying to enter text on a phone kepad is inherently annoying and stupid. If I have to choose between replying to a message right this instant and waiting until I can reply using a proper keyboard, I will wait.
Now if only I could get TiVo to listen to a wireless infrared keyboard rather than requiring me to spell out what I'm looking for with that obnoxious point-and-click alphabet, as if I were a paraplegic, life would be good.
-
You'll adapt
2003-07-10 09:26:05 chirael [Reply | View]
As a geek, you'll adapt because it's new and cool, and as a user you'll adapt because the new interface is wedded to technology which accomplishes something useful (being able to IM from anywhere you have cell phone reception).
It's all market-driven. People are willing to put up with 12 key interfaces because the need for IM anywhere is greater than their need for a keyboard to do it with. I don't think anyone really _likes_ a 12 key interface, but if that's the only thing that will provide that connectivity, that's the best there is right now and people will use it.
On the larger topic of the pay-by-use Internet, I agree that it's not a great trend at all. Per-Kb SMS charges are why I refuse to sign up for one of the cell phone messaging services even though I've thought of a few times when IMing on my cell would be useful and viable while holding a voice conversation would not.
However, when you think about it, most use of the Internet is currently pay-based anyway. It might be flat fee (like an ISP) or it might be embedded in some other service (like a degree program at school, or employment at work), but you're paying for it one way or another.
"Free as air" e-mail is a myth. It's an illusion created by flat-rate plans, though of course every e-mail you send makes your per-message charge lower. Here's to hoping that people in the market vote with their dollars as soon as flat-rate SMS is offered in the U.S.
Anthony
(A Dvorak keyboard user :) -
flat rate for SMS
2003-07-11 11:54:52 anonymous2 [Reply | View]
i agree with that the fact that paying per text message really rots. When friends sent me my first text, i was skeptical, and replied haltingly with my 12-key interface (damn! why do i have to hit "7" four times for "s"?
like any adapter, i got the hang quick.
but by my next cell phone billing cycle, i was up to $40 in SMS charges.
Luckily they offered a "flat rate" plan at 5% of the cost of individual messages if i bought 100 or more per month. I switched.
i hope that is a continuing trend, as the service become more widely used, rates will have to be affordable or at least bundled with other cell plans.
Do the Amish really use cell phones in the stables?
jtheb
webcreationsrus.com
-
the bent-ness of things
2003-07-10 04:57:10 anonymous2 [Reply | View]
You've hit on something here - the structural/cultural/ethical/~/~ disconnect between the Engineer and the User is magnified and shown in the strange things people have to learn to do to communicate with each other using modern (post-modern?) technology.
At the same time, the inherent bent-ness of human life embraces this chasm and people actually take pride of ownership in the wacky ways they adapt to a design ethic that serves millions of users, as opposed to just one.
There is chaos under heaven, and the situation is excellent! ;->
-Bill
I've been using predictive text (T9) on my mobiles for years now - that's how people can hammer out a text message in a few seconds without looking.
Hand-writing "telephone" on paper is a lot slower than pressing 835374663; indeed, T9 is probably as quick as a QWERTY keyboard. It's quite efficient, too - each thumb moves a maximum of ~10mm; usually only ~3mm.
Compared to leaving an answer phone message, there's no contest - dialling the number, waiting for connection, listening to the voicemail introduction, recording the message, and hanging up vs. 10-15 seconds to tap it out and hit send.
The mobile phone keyboard, with T9, is actually a damned good interface - I miss it when I use touchscreen PDAs with handwriting recognition. Predictive text is better than Graffiti, and better than thumbboards. What's not to like?