Re: QWERTY-bashing in the copyright age

Ilias Karasavvidis (karasavvidis who-is-at edte.utwente.nl)
Sun, 27 Sep 1998 02:54:54 GMT+200

Hello,

On 26 Sep 98 at 0:41, Bruce wrote:

> This is however what happens to some degree - it is impossible to be
> sure that any software is totally bug-free - for reasons that are
> not merely technical but rooted in the epistemological constraints
> we all face.
I agree but I'm not sure that's the point I was trying to make.
Rumor has it that Windows 95 is comprised of 15 million lines of
code; if that's indeed the case then no wonder why people get these
"an uknown error has occured" error messages... the point is that
when I want to copy a file from one directory to another I want to do
just that; there's a sequence of actions I'm supposed to do; if I
carry them out properly and the file is deleted instead of copied,
then I guess I'm not gonna be very pleased especially if I cannot
recover it. Deleting instead of copying is unacceptable. I expect the
software to be reliable (or at least minimally reliable). Maybe I'm
naive but I tend to make such assumptions about many cultural tools
in general.

>See Brian Cantwell-Smith's excellent article (1996 /
> 1985). Limits of correctness in computers. In Computerization and
> Controversy: Value conflicts and social choices, 2nd edition (Kling,
> R., ed), 810-25, Academic Press, San Diego.
thanx for pointing this out; will look at it;

<snip>

> It just occurs to me that for a touch-typist there is no reason why
> the QWERTY keyboard should be any more difficult than an ABCDEF
> keyboard.
Well, Norman reports that the alphabetiacal keyboard works "barely
better than random...Moral: don't bother with alphabetical keyboards"
(1988; p, 148). He also reports that for expert typists the
alphabetical one is always slower than the querty; Of course, for
experts the ASA/Dvorak one is the best.

On 25 Sep 98 at 20:52, Eugene wrote:

> Hello everybody--
>
> I just want to comment that such skill as QWERTY typing or school
> teaching can be viewed as "educational capital" or 'cultural
> inertia' depending who is talking and why. There are so many
> rationalities often crossing around a practice that make it
> sometimes seemed as irrational especially if these rationalities are
> poorly coordinated.
>
> What do you think?

I would agree, mostly because "practice" is not necessarily
rational. I like the term 'cultural inertia' because it does not
have a 'rationality' flavor...

On 26 Sep 98 at 22:44, Eva wrote:

<snip>

> Then, thinking about terminology I wonder what would happen if we
> could put words like "irrational", "ignorant" and "unreflective"
> (AND their positive complements) in a kind of quarantine for a
> while... these dichotomies seem to be the kind of cultural tools
> that for the present appropriate us more than we are able to
> appropriate them.
:-)
No problem. I just tend to think that they are very "descriptive".

On 25 Sep 98 at 10:28, Luiz wrote:

> As you said, the main argument is based on jamming, which is based
> on the frequency of letters of the ENGLISH language. But I ask
> myself if the advantages and disadvantages of the QUERTY versus the
> DVORAK, besides being "chronically" related, are not also culturally
> dependent. If the differences for English writers is small, for
> other groups, the differences may be even less significative to
> trigger a change.

<snip>

This is a very good point I think and reminded me of something else.
The keyboard mapping for Greek characters is of course a bit
different than the standard English mapping (there are some special
language letters like "i", [ksi] - need Greek font to read it; there
are only 24 letters; the key for some of the letters e.g. 'S' is
ostensibly the same but there is a catch etc). Whenever I have
to type in Greek text I tend to make a lot of typos in the first
two or three paragraphs because I need time to get used to the
different mapping. It gets better with time of course. When I
have to switch to English, though, I experience the same
difficulty: the same pattern occurs with lots of typing errors for
the first few minutes.
Does anyone else have the same experience?

Regards,
Ilias


_______________________________________________

Ilias Karasavvidis
Department of Curriculum Technology
Faculty of Educational Science and Technology
University of Twente, P.O. Box 217
7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands
Voice: +31534894473
Fax: +31534892895
Email: Karasavvidis who-is-at edte.utwente.nl
http://130.89.40.26/www
http://130.89.40.26/ilias

"The ancient Greeks did not know the main thing
about themselves, that they were ancient Greeks"
Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin
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