Handwriting & Computers

[Mysterioso]

The subthread on handwriting within the thread on education had me wondering about handwriting conversion with computers.

To me keyboards always seemed a compromise forced by the until then limitations of computers; better than punchcards but not as natural as writing.
With keyboards, there is also the whole keyboard layout issue of QWERTY not being as well set-up as DVORAK but being the standard: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvorak_Simplified_Keyboard
There is speech recognition, which from what I have read in the news is supposed to be good now but still not widely adopted as many people got burned by it in earlier versions. To me there also seems to be the problem of what would a work place be like if you had even a small number, like 10, employees in cublicles all speaking out load to get information into their computers?

OTOH, handwriting as way of getting information into a computer does not seem to have gone far. Palm had its system, but that, and Palm itself seems dead. Ipads and Tablets do not seem to come with a stylus standard. (I miss the stylus I had with my Palm as I still feel like some clumsy Australopithecine when trying to "type" with my Droid.)

So, is the near future of entering information into computers firmly with keyboards or will touchscreens & tablets bring back handwriting* as something seen as important? (I have to imagine the far future will be some type of nervous system to computer interface.)


* Not particularly cursive, which was the starting point of the subthread in the education thread.

[boredoom]

I think the keyboard is going to be around for a good long while more. Speech recognition is probably OK if you just want to enter simple things, but editing a text using speech alone must be a nightmare. Perhaps someone will crack the code and combine speech and touch entry smoothly, but that will take some time.

The big problem with handwriting is that it's slower than typing, especially if you want to make it legible to someone else, or a computer.

[Mysterioso]

The big problem with handwriting is that it's slower than typing, especially if you want to make it legible to someone else, or a computer.

I wonder if that is true for the majority. I honestly don't know. I know there are people who can blaze away with typing. (Some students have shown me how they can text with the phone behind their back using not even a keyboard but with the old phone interface.) But it seems like for many typing is slower than writing. There is no question of legibility being an issue; though I wonder if there is not match handwriting samples software that is similar to the speak for a half hour for setting voice recognition on voice-to-text programs.

[Evilyn]

Interesting! I don't know enough about the tech in general, but it does seem like speech recog would be particular to only a limited range of environments. I yammer a siri and only half the time she's listening.

How we type might change though, faster than how we get our thoughts into computers. There are 13 year olds out there that a hell with two thumbs and a touchscreen when it comes to texting.

[faust]

Comfort with typing is also a generational thing, so it's only going to become more prevalent, not less. Until we invent the Minority Report interface.

[boredoom]

I wonder if that is true for the majority.

The difference may not be as big as I imagine: Wikipedia says the average rate of transcription is 33 words per minute using a keyboard, and 22 for handwriting, though it's not clear that these are apples to apples comparisons. It's clear, however, that keyboard entry speeds go much higher for professional typists, which would include pretty much any office worker, these days. To go much higher with handwriting, you need to use shorthand, which is difficult to learn - I've tried. Shorthand achieves higher speeds by cutting out some of the redundancy inherent in our alphabet, which means that you need to write very precisely.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Words_per_minute

[overeddie]

To follow up on what boredoom said about speech recog, speech seems well-adapted to conversation, but not for composing long texts. But, if speech recognition catches on, maybe we'll see epic poetry overtake the novel in popularity.

[kajabor]

Most people I know who do much writing can touch type, and low-speed touch typing is around 55 words per minute. If you're any good at it you'll be closer to 80, and autocorrect can add even more speed. There's no way I could go back to handwriting for any lengthy piece. On the other hand, the "keyboards" on phones and tablets suck, and are more of a kludge than a real solution to the text input problem for these devices.

[Questionor]

Most people I know who do much writing can touch type, and low-speed touch typing is around 55 words per minute. If you're any good at it you'll be closer to 80, and autocorrect can add even more speed. There's no way I could go back to handwriting for any lengthy piece. On the other hand, the "keyboards" on phones and tablets suck, and are more of a kludge than a real solution to the text input problem for these devices.

I can't stand the tiny buttons physical or touch screen that you have to tap out, but I really like swype. It works pretty well though autocorrect errors are truly odd sometimes because of how the algorithm works.

[Matt Wilson]

Typing is one of the few long-term useful classes I took in high school. I can definitely type faster than I write, and when I type, it's legible.