And what amazes me is that you would rather be able to look people up then actually know who they are. It isn’t impossible to remember people. I can still remember most of the people I went to elementary school with, and would certainly be able to recognize them if I ran into them. I think using Google has your external brain might result in you not bothering to commit anything to memory. And see, that is the flaw right there. So, in the future, will we simply look items up on Facebook accounts to learn more about people, rather than socializing. And learning about people should not be considered time consuming. It is a natural extension of socialization and human interaction. You want to absent yourself from that activity and – instead – catalogue all of your acquaintances through Facebook?

I mean, don’t get me wrong. I would be all for some sort of interface that expedites research (as long as people remain aware of how to properly document said research).

And yes. There are some words that you write with one hand with QWERTY, but DVORAK has all the vowels in a line, specifically e and a, which are two of the first and third most common letters in the english language (I believe the second most common is ‘t’).

So, DVORAK would still be the masturbatory keyboard scheme of choice.

Also, sorry it took me so long to drop a response. I honestly didn?t think anyone would come back to the topic because I posted a comment so late.

Rest assured, this topic will be re-visited at some point with updates on how things are progressing and my experiences with the Dvorak layout and how it’s affected my usual computing habits. (Positively or negatively)

This has turned out to be quite a stirring post with some very decent arguments made for both the status quo and radically ridiculous change in terms of advancing technologies. Thank you everyone for your comments.

I see it as a natural extension of what we have to do today – removing arbitrary obstacles. Farmers don’t go out with a scythe and thresh their own wheat; they have big machines to do it. Thanks to those big machines, more people are able to eat and live happy, well fed lives.

Any time you can make existing tasks easier, faster, and cheaper, you allow human labor to do other, likely more productive things. We don’t have thousands of monks spending their lives hand copying works, instead we have printing presses and digital distribution.

Already, Google is my external brain. If I don’t know something, Google is my first port of call. With more pervasive technology, we could integrate computers even more closely into being our “external brains”. An example – every day on campus, I pass people who I recognize but whose names I don’t know, and I don’t know where they’re from. If I could wear some sunglasses that would run facial recognition on those people, and pop up their vitals when I see them, I’d be a much happier man.

Oh, I can usually track someone down, through Google and Facebook, and questioning people – but in this vision of mine technolgy makes something really hard and time consuming to do almost effortless. That’s a win in my opinion

(Oh, I just realized, you write “opinion” all with one hand on QWERTY – so QWERTY is hardly immune to using one hand to type things)

And the biggest culprit of more automation, lower standards is spell checking. No one uses proper grammar anymore, and I’ve seen more than my fair share of improperly spelt words within the Red Card Group alone. I’ve also talked to the people from the English Language Proficiency Program here at the University of Waterloo, and they are saying that something like 60 – 70% of people across all Faculties fail the English Language Proficiency Exam and have to take a course as a substitute. And don’t assume that this number is just international students. The advent of the spell-checker has caused literacy to crumble.

What happens when everything on a computer is automated? Soon people will be lacking even the basic skills to locate information on their own and to make intuitive connections between topics. If everything is just fed to you on demand, we will end up suffering so much.

Also, I’m not a fan of DVORAK. They say that it is more convenient, but all the vowels are in one place, which has led to a lot of finger stumbling when typing a word like oatmeal or Oregon or duality. I find that QWERTY letters are laid out in such a way that I usually alternate between hands.

Alternate. Nearly every other letter there requires me to switch hands or use the opposite side of a hand. That is nice and comfy. I will remain prejudiced against DVORAK until its merits are undeniable.

Binks: Yeah, I was being extreme with the idea, haha. You could be right. I suppose I just don’t look forward to re-learning a whole way of typing just to get in 2 words a minute more then I used to. And part of me spends enough time re-reading why I type anyways before I put it down to verify it’s what I wanted to say anyways, that in the end I don’t think it’d make a big difference.

Wow. I’m glad I don’t go to your doctor. I thought it was weird when I had to “sign in” on a laptop at my dentists when I got there, so I didn’t even have to talk to the receptionist. I’m pretty sure there was a little webcam lens sitting at the top of that things screen too. Freaky.

I guess what I’m trying to get at is that I see it being possible for a new layout to be better, on average, then another text layout. It’s like getting a new bus route – it still doesn’t take you to your house, but if it gets you closer then the old route, you’re doing OK.

You are right about the privacy concerns – I know that even today, though, my doctor’s got apple PCs in every exam room – first time I went in and saw that they had webcams built-in I was pretty creeped out.

I just want to see more done on new fronts of interaction with computers and as a way of preparing myself for the drastic changes that lay ahead, I thought I’d try and turn my world upside down and try to learn how to type all over again.

That, and I may have just been bored.

Anyways, my question is what’s wrong with the QWERTY method? I very, very rarely ever finding myself thinking something and feeling like it’s taking a long time to get it down on the screen. If something was very minimally faster, would I even notice? I’m guessing the true “fastest” keyboard setup is going to have to take a look at both which letters are used most in the alphabet, which reflexes in your hand are fastest for what things, which combinations of reflexes don’t go well together, and the entire keyboard system would have be re-made using that. Maybe that’s how DVORAK did it? (Okay, I looked it up. It kinda does.) But that said, if we wanted to get real nerdy on this whole subject, you could say that everyone’s nerve systems and even the words they use most is going to be different for everyone, and therefore everyone will need a separate keyboard for true efficiency (which will never happen, short of some really sweet tech advances). I’m not arguing DVORAK isn’t better per se, but I’m just saying some typing system developed in the freakin’ 1930′s perhaps needs a better look before people start adapting it en mass.

And just to get into everyone else’s posts a little, part of me doesn’t really want insane UI (or lack there of, as some of you have commented). That’s when computer’s start to get creepy. You’d never know who’s listening to you. You’d never know who’s watching. I’d be unplugging my mic and webcam whenever I wasn’t using it just so I wasn’t worried. If this was a true reality, we wouldn’t even be able to unplug them, I’m guessing. Creepy. Very cool, but creepy. Government conspiracies! Internet pervs! Zorkan Lasers from Porvak III, the home of the Porvoids! Okay, just kidding. But you get what I mean.