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A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards

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Re: A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards

#121

Post by mwcampbell »

laurieg wrote: post #66
jdietrich wrote: post #45

It's worth bearing in mind that the source is Japanese. All input methods for the Japanese language are a compromise. Inputting kanji on a physical keyboard is nowhere near as fluid as inputting Latin characters - you're constantly toggling between inputting kana and selecting the kanji options presented by the IME. The prediction and correction technologies of smartphone keyboards are a very good match for kanji and…

This is definitely a big factor. When you look at a Japanese computer keyboard [1] you might see lots of Japanese characters on the keys. Almost nobody actually uses these to type. Instead, if you want a か(ka) character then you type k,a on the familiar qwerty keys. These phonetic characters then get converted into the more complex Chinese-origin characters as you go along, allowing you to disambiguate homophones. Th…

> Cast your mind back to when you first encountered a computer keyboard. I remember hunting for seconds to find letters in this unfamiliar arrangement.

How early did you learn to type? As an American born in 1980, I learned in first grade, and I don't remember it being a struggle. So maybe it's really important to learn early.

FWIW, I'm visually impaired, so looking at the keyboard wasn't a practical option.

Re: A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards

#122

Post by agumonkey »

I mostly hate tactile-less devices, fingers and eyes are nicely decoupled, and now I'm forced to focus on my smartphone.

But recently I tried typing on android keyboard with all fingers. It's hard (no tactile delimitation or confirmation) but doable. I wonder if kids these days consider this as normal pro use of smartphones. Basically cultural relativity.

Re: A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards

#123

Post by 21 »

jacquesm wrote: post #112
21 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't easily create anything of any substance on a mobile device The instagram community would like a word with you.

You just made his point a lot stronger.

Only if you "I know what good art is and this ain't"

Don't be like these guys: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp)

Re: A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards

#124

Post by ModernMech »

jedberg wrote: post #93
ModernMech wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to write my reports on a type writer. A smartphone would have been a dream come true back then.

But didn't you write a longhand draft first? Or at least longhand outlines?

Yeah, but I mean, those didn't have spell check or word completion or copy/paste or even backspace. Do you know the pain of typing a wrong character on a typewriter? It gets old.

Re: A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards

#125

Post by rdiddly »

bachbach wrote: post #95
mikebelanger wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the reason for the decline in self-built in homes is advancements in modular home building. They're much better, and more economical than ever before. Even my Dad, who self-built two large homes himself, admitted it doesn't make sense to self-build. One is better off just working more in whatever specialty they do, and getting a modular home.

We're not buying those either. I've seen only one prefab in my area. We're not even building Tiny Houses. That movement has faded away as the land permission issue dominated over their advantages. Meanwhile: https://youtu.be/M73r32vK7C4 That's not a joke - there is a steep decline in being 'handy' - I'm doing everything I can to learn how to be but it still feels a bit unnatural. That lack of adaptability is like an…

I'm old and I just learned the "case length" trick!

Re: A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards

#126

Post by emodendroket »

natch wrote: post #118
jdietrich wrote: post #45

It's worth bearing in mind that the source is Japanese. All input methods for the Japanese language are a compromise. Inputting kanji on a physical keyboard is nowhere near as fluid as inputting Latin characters - you're constantly toggling between inputting kana and selecting the kanji options presented by the IME. The prediction and correction technologies of smartphone keyboards are a very good match for kanji and…

On a tangent here but curious, if you know: what's the closest input method you can get to flick for Chinese? I realize the languages are quite different (might be botching this, but my fuzzy understanding for Japanese is it has kanji+katakana+kana+romaji, where Chinese has only hanzi + pinyin|zhuyin/etc.) Do you think flick is compatible with Chinese?

They don't have that. They do have handwriting recognition.

Re: A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards

#127

Post by freehunter »

actsasbuffoon wrote: post #72
21 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the other hand, a toddler who explores the world as if it is a touch screen has been given way too much time on a touch screen. So there is definitely a problem there. You are making quite an assumption here. People of many centuries ago would also say that we raise our kids in a wrong way, because we don't teach them how to survive in the wild or how to work a potato field.

I live in an agrarian area where potato farming is a major industry. It’s a hard life, and not one that I’d encourage my son to get into. I think he’ll be better off with a computer.

When I was a kid growing up on a farm, we'd have semi trucks come by and pick up our produce, and I thought that would be such an easier life than actually producing the crops. I told my grandpa that I wanted to be a truck driver when I grew up, and a few weeks later he drove into town and bought a computer to keep me from being either a farmer or a truck driver. He had been both, and didn't want me to be either.

Re: A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards

#128

Post by greglindahl »

api wrote: post #27
nickserv wrote: post #9

Do your children a favor and get them a "real" computer with keyboard and mouse, instead of a tablet. I've found it helps with several things. For one, I've seen children accustomed to using touch interfaces blurring the line between physical and virtual, i.e swiping at physical objects like books, photos, even walls. I've not seen this behavior with those used to non touch interfaces. Also, learning to use a keyboar…

Even more important is the nature of PCs vs mobile devices. The mobile platform is designed to commoditize the user and create a stark division between users on one side and content and software creators on the other. You can't easily create anything of any substance on a mobile device and the ecosystem discourages it by e.g. treating user data as unimportant. PCs were designed to be devices for people to create thin…

There are bluetooth keyboards for tablets. I spend most of my laptop time on a browser and in ssh, both of which I can do effectively on a tablet with a keyboard.

Re: A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards

#129

Post by kitsunesoba »

eugeniub wrote: post #52
radicaldreamer wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I highly doubt you'll find a 14 year old who swipes at a book... kids very quickly learn context and rules of physics. It's much harder when some screens are touch screens and some are not, however, but I see adults trying to swipe non-touch screens all the time (mall displays, ads, iMacs etc.)

Meanwhile we adults are still occasionally trying to Ctrl-Z real life.

I was constantly running into this during drawing classes in college after having spent countless hours in Photoshop in high school. It’s amazing how firmly the Cmd-Z reflex plants itself as a reaction to making a mistake!

I’ve also caught myself yearning for Cmd-F when hunting for something in large chunks of printed text.

Re: A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards

#130

Post by scarface74 »

titanix2 wrote: post #73
scarface74 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PCs were designed to be devices for people to create things. I think you have an idealized view of how most people use PCs. Even during the first era of PCs in the 80s, most kids used them for playing games. By the mid 90s, it was all about games and “multimedia” on CDs. Then Facebook and social media games. The geeks that looked forward to InCider, Nybble, and whatever the offshoot computer mag from 3-2-1 Contact we…

Of course, but having the technical possibility to create something on the machine make this minority exists in the first place. Now take the same demographic with a locked down class of devices and the basic programming crowd fall to 0%.

With iOS 12, Apple will be integrating automation that lets you automate actions within other programs either visually or from what I’ve read JavaScript. Just imagine what kids can do when they can use their phone to automate smart home devices.

There are also apps that let you program robots.

https://www.apple.com/shop/product/HK962VC/A/ubtech-jimu-rob...

Amazon announced an easy way to program Alexa.

https://developer.amazon.com/alexa-skills-kit/alexa-skill-py...

There is also Swift Playgrounds.

https://www.apple.com/swift/playgrounds/

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