A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards • Hacker News Board

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

#151

Post by gaius » Sun, Jul 22, 2018, 5:23 PM UTC

jdietrich wrote: post #80

xexers wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you aren't actually creating content [art, software, serious writing, etc] then using a mobile is fine I've seen some serious art been made using ipads and even mobile phones alone. Hang out with creative teenagers and you'll see it too. There are entire video editing suites on ipad that can create slick videos entirely with touch gestures. https://www.imore.com/why-i-love-editing-video-ipad-it-can-s...

The iPad is a fabulous music-making tool. A lot of people with fully equipped recording studios prefer to use the iPad when they're sketching out ideas, because they find it easier to stay in a creative mindset. Several artists have recorded and mixed albums entirely on the iPad. The BBC now routinely use iPhones for TV and radio newsgathering; they have developed an in-house app for capturing content and directly in…

The BBC now routinely use iPhones for TV and radio newsgathering

They also routinely report "someone said something on Twitter" as if it was actual news. It doesn't mean it's a good idea.

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

#152

Post by userbinator » Sun, Jul 22, 2018, 5:23 PM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #20

NullPrefix wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watching TV makes you good with RF.

Watching TV in the 50s made you good with knob adjustment and basic electronics maintenance, just because things tended to break and also tended to break in fixable ways. The same thing is true today, kids that play Minecraft aren't getting any better with computers by clicking on blocks, they are getting better by doing the things necessary to keep the blocks there in front of them (because if you want to install mo…

Watching TV in the 50s made you good with knob adjustment and basic electronics maintenance, just because things tended to break and also tended to break in fixable ways.

In particular, tube replacement was pretty common DIY and even nonspecialist corner stores would sell tubes and have self-service testers:

http://travelphotobase.com/v/USOK/OKCH66.HTM

In similar analogy, I wonder how many people today know how to replace a lightbulb and will do it themselves, and what that would be like in a few decades...

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

#153

Post by polygot » Sun, Jul 22, 2018, 5:24 PM UTC

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…

I'm on a bit of a tangent, but it appears that a lot of people are beginning to use voice-recognition to recognize Japanese and Chinese, or are sending the actual voice clips instead of manual input methods such as handwriting recognition.

Granted, this is my very limited experience. Perhaps this could be a competing way to help communicate in foreign languages.

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

#154

Post by JumpCrisscross » Sun, Jul 22, 2018, 5:26 PM UTC

megaman22 wrote: post #37

strken wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always felt that young people are seen as good with computers because they're more confident and less afraid of failure, and that even if their only experience is instagram they're more likely to google a scary error message or click around at random in various menus.

I'm not sure that that is the case, any longer. I have a lot of trouble with our college-aged interns, because they will barely make an effort to try doing something before getting stonewalled and bailing out to go ask someone to do it for them. Sometimes I just want to yell at them to run the code and see what happens, and then try to figure out why what happened happened. And these are computer science majors.

> doing something before getting stonewalled and bailing out to go ask someone to do it for them

Funny this is the problem. One of my major life lessons was learning not to always persevere, and to ask for help as soon as possible. Solves more problems faster, teaches you more ways of looking at a problem and smoothly scales to delegation.

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

#155

Post by JumpCrisscross » Sun, Jul 22, 2018, 5:28 PM UTC

zencash wrote: post #137

I think it will take time, keyboard, when first encounters can be hard to use, saying that, younger people these days have access to a keyboard almost 24/7 whether it be iPads or mobiles that they use. I'd like to see how kids of this generation can manage using a franking machine [1] or even a photocopier. Our currently generation 25-40 used floppy disks at some point, now it's just an icon on your software suite [2…

> now it's just an icon on your software suite

I’m trying to remember the last time I saw this icon. Either what I’m working on has “save” as text, is constantly auto-saved or requires Ctrl-S.

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

#156

Post by whatshisface » Sun, Jul 22, 2018, 5:28 PM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #152

whatshisface wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watching TV in the 50s made you good with knob adjustment and basic electronics maintenance, just because things tended to break and also tended to break in fixable ways. The same thing is true today, kids that play Minecraft aren't getting any better with computers by clicking on blocks, they are getting better by doing the things necessary to keep the blocks there in front of them (because if you want to install mo…

Watching TV in the 50s made you good with knob adjustment and basic electronics maintenance, just because things tended to break and also tended to break in fixable ways. In particular, tube replacement was pretty common DIY and even nonspecialist corner stores would sell tubes and have self-service testers: http://travelphotobase.com/v/USOK/OKCH66.HTM In similar analogy, I wonder how many people today know how to re…

Embedded computers have done a lot to ruin automotive DIY. Someone should write a short story where nobody can change their low-failure-rate LED light bulbs without calling a technician who has a programmer card with the right IoT private keys. Electric utilities are no longer common-carier and underground cyberpunk "Edisons" fabricate incandscents that disguise themselves as toasters on the grid in order to circumvent the expensive licensing deals between lightbulb manufacturers and power companies.

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

#157

Post by catchmeifyoucan » Sun, Jul 22, 2018, 5:34 PM UTC

I can confirm this. My brother is in high school and their school uses ipads religiously to submit work, handle slide decks and do quizzes. At his age, I had a typing speed of ~40-50WPM, he can barely do 30, with a lower accuracy (spellcheck subtly saving him). No proper typing form either because touchscreen devices are really just one finger-based. This definitely exists.

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

#158

Post by crazygringo » Sun, Jul 22, 2018, 5:34 PM UTC

messe wrote: post #114

innocenat wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not hard to edit & reorganised with larger screen smartphone at all.

It seems like it would be more awkward than with a mouse+keyboard controlled text editor, but I'd be happy to be proven wrong. I'd love to get better with working with touchscreens, but I haven't seen any way of getting the composability I've become accustomed to on the *nix command line and associated editors (be it vim, emacs or even the monoliths of atom and vscode).

Of course it's more awkward. But it's also not hard. And if a phone is all you've got, and you don't have the money to spend on a computer on top of it... then you make do. It's not the end of the world. It's fine.

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

#159

Post by uiri » Sun, Jul 22, 2018, 5:36 PM UTC

kitsunesoba wrote: post #129

eugeniub wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's why traditional books (especially references and textbooks) have an index at the back.

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

#160

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jul 22, 2018, 5:36 PM UTC

esmi wrote: post #110

ssivark wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, one can technically vomit out a few hundred words using a small touch screen. But the tools make it damn difficult to edit and re-organize text. Does this mean that all such reports are basically stream-of-consciousness writing instead of a more carefully polished piece of work?

There are many writing apps available, for example Microsoft Word free edition. One does not have to compose in a text box. Use the app to write it then copy and paste the result.

[deleted]