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The End of Handwriting

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Re: The End of Handwriting

#231

Post by kccqzy »

meander_water wrote: post #86

I've tried for years to keep a regular journal. But everytime I stare at a blank screen I can't summon up enough activation energy to write anything. On a whim, I tried writing in a physical journal, and to my surprise I found it a lot easier to be consistent and write down my thoughts before they disappear. It also improved my handwriting over time, and also your hands hurt less the more you write. One theory I have…

I feel completely opposite. When I write, I find that my brain is overflowing with different ideas and different sentence structures. If I write by hand, by the time I finish writing out the first idea the second is gone from my brain. When I type on a keyboard I actually can finish typing out the first idea without forgetting the second.

Re: The End of Handwriting

#232

Post by veqq »

kqr wrote: post #152
noosphr wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cursive as taught in schools today is useless at best and dangerous for your health at worst. The cursive that made the world run between 1850 and 1925 was called business penmanship and it lets you write at 40 words per minute for 14 hours every day for decades on end without pain or injury. If you're interested here's the best book about it: https://archive.org/details/tamblyns-home-instructor-in-penm... Note the a…

When going through the effort to re-learn how to write, why would one learn this rather than one of the more logical/easy shorthand systems? (To clarify, I mean in this day and age! I would understand if one needed to send 300 letters a day to a non-shorthand reader.)

Here's a nice article on some shorthands: https://blog.zdsmith.com/series/shorthands.html

Re: The End of Handwriting

#234

Post by bluGill »

skeezyboy wrote: post #215
bluGill wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone has a smartphone is close enough to the truth. There are people living in mud huts that have smart phones, even though they cook on an open fire and use candles for light. More than half the world population has smart phones, and even some very poor countries have surprisingly high penetration.

>Everyone has a smartphone is close enough to the truth. Again, youre dreaming. Not even close to 6/7 billion smartphone owners. https://www.gsma.com/newsroom/press-release/smartphone-owner...

World population is in the 8 billion range last I checked, while smart phone owners are over 5 billion. That is most, and close enough to everyone for discussion.

Re: The End of Handwriting

#235

Post by bluGill »

skeezyboy wrote: post #213
bluGill wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone has a smartphone is close enough to the truth. There are people living in mud huts that have smart phones, even though they cook on an open fire and use candles for light. More than half the world population has smart phones, and even some very poor countries have surprisingly high penetration.

>There are people living in mud huts that have smart phones, even though they cook on an open fire and use candles for light. How are they charging it and what network serves mud-huts?

I'm not sure, I'm guessing solar. Perhaps a community charger or something. Whatever network serves their country would serve them.

Re: The End of Handwriting

#236

Post by randcraw »

I'm reading "The Swerve", Stephen Greenblatt's marvelous book on the discovery of Lucretius' De Rerum Natura (The Nature of Things"), a Roman-era scroll on Epicurus' philosophy, by Poggio Bracciolini in 1417. The work was copied by hand repeatedly since 50 BCE by monks and other scripturae, despite its essential refutation of both faith and religion.

In his day, Poggio, like Petrarch, was famous for the elegant beauty of his penmanship. Like the best of his craft, Poggio wrote not for speed but for beauty and timeless legibility.

While I have no plans to write in latin, this has convinced me that I want to learn how to write (and print) with style. (My cursive has always been horrific.) Since reading-to-learn is best done by taking notes by hand of whatever you want to remember, I'm hoping this pursuit will not only improve my retention but also my attention to detail since it will give me time to think out more fully what I think is important and how best to say it.

Re: The End of Handwriting

#237

Post by bluGill »

Podrod wrote: post #207
bluGill wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of written works did not survive. Paper will rot, and inks fade - in the typical case you only get a couple hundred years (deserts like Egypt give you thousands - which is why archaeology is so interested in Egypt, there is a lot more remaining to study but we have no idea how Egypt reflects people elsewhere). Before the printing press, books had to be copied by hand each copy separately - this is a…

A hell of a lot more texts survived from ancient Mesopotamia thanks to them writing on clay tablets. If the town burnt down the tablets just get better preserved.

True, at the expense of being even harder to write than pen/ink.

I'm no expert, but my understanding is most of the tables survive because the town brunt - otherwise the clay was erased and we lost what was on it. It is really hard to write something book length on clay because of thickness, but for lists you will erase when done (think shopping lists - which is of great interest to archaeology because it is insights that wouldn't have been put in books) clay is easier than making more paper.

Re: The End of Handwriting

#238

Post by bluGill »

1718627440 wrote: post #202
bluGill wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Machines have been writing with pens for longer than I've been alive - since 1958 according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plotter#History . For that matters, pens are a type of machine. if you use a pen you are a machine operator.

A pen is a tool not a machine, or does your pen have a motor?

What is the difference between tool and machine?

Re: The End of Handwriting

#239

Post by Exoristos »

noosphr wrote: post #144
cyocum wrote: post #111

I find these articles both baffling and frustrating at the same time. I find it frustrating because I spent recess after recess locked inside to practice cursive. After many months of this, my handwriting had not improved. The teachers finally relented and stopped punishing me because the punishment never actually improved my handwriting. My handwriting is now print only and is still horrible and has never improved.…

Cursive as taught in schools today is useless at best and dangerous for your health at worst. The cursive that made the world run between 1850 and 1925 was called business penmanship and it lets you write at 40 words per minute for 14 hours every day for decades on end without pain or injury. If you're interested here's the best book about it: https://archive.org/details/tamblyns-home-instructor-in-penm... Note the a…

This book is quite a find. I'm tempted to give it a go, as it could make my writing portable anywhere. My only misgiving is later getting that writing into electronic form, which nowadays is a non-negotiable. The technology for handwriting recognition, long-form, seems to still be fairly poor.

Re: The End of Handwriting

#240

Post by kqr »

IAmBroom wrote: post #181
jeltz wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cursive is essentially just a shorthand. It is just a standardized way of writing fast while sacrificing some readability. So, yes, now that the world no longer uses crusive that much you might as well pick another standard.

I would strongly disagree. Shorthand is (hopefully lossless) compression technique. Cursive is a font optimized for continuous use by the human hand and a stylus, leveraging keeping the stylus point on the page between letters of the same word. It's comparing 7-Zip to Arial.

At their core, sensible shorthand systems are just another alphabet of shapes that are easy to form and string together.

They add various aabreviations and common short forms on top of that, but one easily gets something like 50 % of the benefit by only using them as an alternative alphabet.

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