Last week, NBC ran a TV segment predicting the potential demise of keyboarding classes. It seems that so many kids are becoming accustomed to texting that they don’t see the need to learn formal keyboarding skills. It also seems that smartphone manufacturers believe that predictive keyboarding is advancing at a rate that will make the need to spell words – or indeed, even know what words you wanted to use – irrelevant in the future.
Now I’m sure some of you know that I used to be an English teacher, and so you might be tempted to think that I find this development unnerving. But nothing could be further from the truth! I think this is perfectly awesome. And let me tell you why:
Sticking with the Things That Came Easy to You as a Child Is Way Better than Learning New Things! This is the primary reason that I only eat soft foods. There was a time in my life when I didn’t have teeth, and there might come a day in the future when I don’t have teeth again, so I see no reason to learn how to use them while I have them. All of us should encourage our children to do only those things that they feel immediately comfortable with, because if we don’t then they might get good at too many things and decide to leave and have a life of their own. Similarly, you should only encourage your team members to stick with what they already know, no matter how unhelpful some of that knowledge is. Why stretch their boundaries when you could keep them in a tiny little cage instead?
Using Two Fingers is Way Faster Than Using Ten! I’m not a math major, but even I know that. It’s the same reason that I regularly win basketball games all by myself against full five-member teams. And I’m pretty sure all software programmers, video game designers, stock market analysts, and every other person who normally uses typing skills to create whatever it is they create would be way, way faster if they just switched to texting. Besides, having so many fingers moving all at once is confusing. Should I use my right thumb for the space bar, or my left thumb? Which finger is going to reach up to hit the 2 button? If I’m only using two fingers, I wouldn’t have to worry about that!
Technology Is a Perfect Replacement for Actual Thought! The wunderkind hailing the marvels of predictive keyboarding obviously has not sent a hilarious inappropriate text thanks to their smartphone’s predictive keyboarding. Most people think that computers are unconscious machines, but there is no way that can be true considering how often they like to replace ordinary words with the most vulgar and ridiculously inappropriate predictive substitute. I know they’re enjoying themselves; they have to be. And your colleagues will enjoy themselves a lot more if you’d stop thinking about what you’re writing and just let the computer do all that pesky thinking for you.
That’s all for now. I also wanted to let you know that I typed this entire thing with my face, smashing my nose against the keys in what I can only assume will be the next evolution of our communications. Fexting, or face-ting. Hmmmm…..facetext! That’s what I did. I facetexted this.
On the topic of only using a small amount of fingers for typing, one of the fastest typists (average of 160wpm) uses four fingers to type. There is also no issue of strain, even then.