John Yunker, who writes the fine Unwired blog here, asked this question a few weeks ago.
The answer is, in a word...
NO.
Note to history buffs. That's Alger Hiss's typewriter on the right, from the University of Missouri at Kansas City.
The typewriter is one of the few left-handed machines I have. Please don't take it away from me. The design was originally meant to keep manual machines from jamming by spreading the popular keys around, but one by-product of that was to stick some of the most popular keys -- the e, the t, the r, the a, the c, the cat, bat, bet, and faq -- onto the left hand.
By contrast, the right hand can only give you link, lunk, mom, and pop. (Yes, it does give you Hop on Pop, but that just proves Dr. Seuss was part of the right-handed conspiracy.)
The problem with Fastap, with all the mobile keyboard set-ups in fact, is you can't touchtype on them. You can't even hunt-and-peck. At best you can hunt-and-poke.
What's going to happen, over time, is they're all going to be replaced by the human voice.
You are the Always On interface of the future. You and your big mouth.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for over 25 years and has covered the online world professionally since 1985. He founded the "Interactive Age Daily" for CMP Media, and has written for the Chicago Tribune, Advertising Age, and dozens of other publications over the years.
1. Jesse Kopelman on December 21, 2004 12:33 AM writes...
I think people tend to overestimate voice as an input medium for controlling devices. Think about how much brain power it takes for voice based communications on a human to human level. How does the device (always on, we hope) know the difference between when you are talking to it and when you are just talking? What happens when you are in a crowded place with dozens of people talking (to their devices) all at once? Let's say all that is eventually fixed thanks to good programming and Moore's Law; what about when you don't want people to know what you are inputing or your voice is just otherwise occupied by something else? The keyboard/pad is definitely not the final step in the evolution of input/control, but neither is voice by a long shot.
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