Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

asahi.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 365 posts

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

#191

Post by cm2187 »

userbinator wrote: post #138
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…

The geeks that looked forward to InCider, Nybble, and whatever the offshoot computer mag from 3-2-1 Contact were and typed BASIC programs in were the minority. But if you look at the PC magazines from the late 80s/early 90s, magazines not even oriented at "developers" but more "power users", you'll find huge chunks of content devoted to programming --- not just BASIC, but Asm (DOS's DEBUG command was the preferred me…

And for most platforms you need to pay to develop your own programs, a no go for most teenagers.

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

#192

Post by cm2187 »

eric_h wrote: post #120
jacquesm wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just made his point a lot stronger.

There is plenty of truly artistic content created on mobile devices and posted on Instagram, it's not all fake vacation selfies.

True. There is also pictures of food.

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

#193

Post by cm2187 »

falcor84 wrote: post #147

The first example provided in the article (indeed the first sentence) is “How do I double click?”, and I want to focus on this. As a kid in the 90s, I just took double clicking as a necessary evil. But after many many opportunities of trying (mostly successfully) to teach it to both the elderly and to kids, I've gradually grown to hate it. It's such a horrible gesture, difficult to perform, complicated to reason abou…

That being said my mum has been using actual computers for 20 years now (without understanding more than just what she needs), and she double-clicks on everything, even when a single-click should apply. “It works that way”. True.

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

#194

Post by cm2187 »

ssivark wrote: post #61
crazygringo wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who recently worked in education... yes. Anecdotally, I tended to see it at the community-college level with students who owned a large-screen phone and didn't own a computer. I don't think anyone is writing whole research papers or serious lab reports on phones. A two-page reading response is totally doable. Something with footnotes or equations, not so much.

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?

Well the good side is that the UI also makes it very hard to select and copy-paste from wikipedia!

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

#195

Post by Mefis »

jdietrich wrote: post #106
Noumenon72 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fascinating. Is the video representative of texting speed, or is this the fastest human in the world? Are they making choices that would take effort in a different system, or just clicking the next suggested letter?

>Is the video representative of texting speed, or is this the fastest human in the world? From what I understand, he's on the faster end of the normal range. >Are they making choices that would take effort in a different system, or just clicking the next suggested letter? With Japanese kanji or Chinese hànzì, there's no practical way to directly input such a large range of characters. Users type a phonetic spelling,…

For Chinese hanzi, some people also use a stroke input method. You are presented with ~10 possible strokes that make up all hanzi, and by selecting them in the correct order you can write a character.

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

#196

Post by 21 »

walshemj wrote: post #188
21 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what your point is. Coding is significantly harder than writing or pressing two buttons on a video camera, which is also visible in salaries - basic journalist vs. basic camera operator vs. basic coder

Well the UK Day rate for a Camera Operator (labour only) is around £420 for TV and £600 for film - which compares quite well for the contractor rates - and you wont fall foul or IR 35. Journalists your right - there is a lot of young people who have the dream of being the next woodwood and Bernstein - and so news paper publishers take advantage.

> TV cameraman Joel Shippey: 'although a seasoned cameraman can earn between £300 and £400 a day, you'll only be earning the minimum wage for the first few years. I was doing jobs for free when I began'

> "You have to be very sure you want to do it because it involves years of long hours, challenging conditions and low pay."

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2013/mar/12/how-become-tv-...

I doubt there are minimum wage software developers.

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

#197

Post by slig »

cm2187 wrote: post #191
userbinator wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The geeks that looked forward to InCider, Nybble, and whatever the offshoot computer mag from 3-2-1 Contact were and typed BASIC programs in were the minority. But if you look at the PC magazines from the late 80s/early 90s, magazines not even oriented at "developers" but more "power users", you'll find huge chunks of content devoted to programming --- not just BASIC, but Asm (DOS's DEBUG command was the preferred me…

And for most platforms you need to pay to develop your own programs, a no go for most teenagers.

My first experience programming on computers was o a demo version of VB4 (could not export .EXE), and later on JavaScript (copying and pasting things from the Internet).

Nowadays it's even easier to learn how to program without paying anything.

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

#198

Post by ldjb »

falcor84 wrote: post #147

The first example provided in the article (indeed the first sentence) is “How do I double click?”, and I want to focus on this. As a kid in the 90s, I just took double clicking as a necessary evil. But after many many opportunities of trying (mostly successfully) to teach it to both the elderly and to kids, I've gradually grown to hate it. It's such a horrible gesture, difficult to perform, complicated to reason abou…

I often encounter people having issues double-clicking.

Actually, a lot of people have trouble just single-clicking, so double-clicking is even more of a challenge.

A lot of people just can't get the knack for clicking twice in quick succession. And the inconsistency between when they should single-click and when they should double-click causes a lot of confusion.

I think it probably would make life easier to get rid of the double-click.

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

#199

Post by DennisAleynikov »

innocenat wrote: post #135
delroth wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean, "stays an April's Fool"? There are circuit schematics as well as software for it, all available under an open source license: https://github.com/google/mozc-devices/tree/master/mozc-furi...

There's no commercial product? I'd love to be proven wrong though.

It's a kit :)

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

#200

Post by disqard »

actsasbuffoon wrote: post #69
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.)

I’m in my mid-thirties, and I have definitely tried to swipe my MacBook Pro screen a few times. I don’t think it’s an indication of anything troubling. Sometimes you just get lost in what you’re reading and momentarily forget what device you’re using. If anything, I’m glad teens are so absorbed by reading. It was a struggle to get the teens of my generation to read anything!

A little older than you (prolly couple of years).

I remember how when I was a teen and coding a lot inside the Turbo C IDE, it became second nature to press F2 frequently (to save).

Around that time, while working on math homework (on paper), I'd occasionally experience brain farts, where I would think of pressing (not reach for) the F2 key.

FWIW, I have decent handwriting today, and even exchange correspondence with some friends using pen-and-paper.

I do agree that touchscreen usage should be restricted for toddlers.

Post reply on HN