just an asterisk

As I see it, the world doesn’t need any more keyboards.  They are completely unavoidable these days… We have a keyboard on our computers, our phones, and even our iPods.  In a way, this was inevitable – the computer keyboard grew from the typewriter, which in turn was an invention spawned from the printing press, which was spawned from Chinese woodblock techniques going back to the 9th century (or even further).  I guess the added efficiency of reproducible characters is something we’ve been secretly exited about for a loooooooong time.

That doesn’t mean that we have chosen the best ways to go about it.  What is pretty comical about the QWERTY keyboard that we use today is this – when the typewriter was invented just after the US civil war the design was changed.

“The type-bar system and the universal keyboard were the machine’s novelty, but the keys jammed easily. To solve the jamming problem, another business associate, James Densmore, suggested splitting up keys for letters commonly used together to slow down typing. This became today’s standard “QWERTY” keyboard.” – Wiki article

I guess for all you who can’t type (or can’t type well) this is a relief.  You were never meant to!

Unfortunately, considering all of the different keyboards we see each day, I can think of three good reasons to type faster: Read more »