Typing Errors (1996) | Hacker News Reader

Typing Errors (1996)

reason.com

2 pointsbtilly4 comments

This is a terrible article. It's a popularization of a bad legal paper, "The fable of the keys" (1https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/467198). The original did not appear in any publication devoted to ergonomics or human/computer interaction, probably because it does not contribute to those fields. It contains no original research, just some sniping at Dvorak's methodology. While picking at original research has its place, it doesn't constitute a breakthrough without repeating the original study, or doing better research.

Further, the authors clearly started with a conclusion (path dependence doesn't exist in most markets) and worked backwards to a conclusion (Qwerty keyboard is best). This popularization and the original exist only in service of unfettered free market ideology.

Why your fixation on original research?

The article cites attempts to replicate Dvorak's findings by the US General Services Administration (mid 1950s), Western Electric (1973) and Oregon State University (1978). What original knowledge would another repeat of the experiment add? It would be today impossible to today replicate the many 1880s typing tests, but the fact that there were many, and the speeds hit on multiple competing keyboards, demonstrate that the usual stories about keys jamming and a single competition are at best woefully incomplete.

This knowledge already exists, it is just not well-distributed. And, speaking personally, this article is why I abandoned my disappointing project to learn the Dvorak keyboard.

Now the main thing that you dislike, their overall political position, I'm not going to disagree with. The article is at least a bit polemic. They clearly wnat to undermine a legal argument that they oppose. But that for me was the least interesting thing about the article. And you've said nothing about the main point of the article, which is how there is plenty of evidence that QWERTY is an effective layout which beat others in a fair competition, and the most commonly cited evidence for Dvorak was fabricated.

It's this particular paper that bugs me. People, including the linked to article's author, often cite "The Fable of the Keys" as a reason to poo poo Dvorak keyboards, or boost QWERTY keyboards, or further afield, deny path dependence in markets. The Fable of the Keys got cited ca 2000 as evidence that Microsoft couldn't possibly have a monopoly since path dependence doesn't exist.

Around 2003, I scrounged up a copy. Had to visit Denver's Auraria Campus library to find a microfiche copy of The Fable of the Keys. It's a terrible paper, long winded, poorly written even for academic journals. Really hard to get through. But all it has was sniping.

Dvorak probably did do bad research. QWERTY may beat all others. But The Fable of the Keys could be a 2 page note if that's its contribution. It's just an ideological screed masquerading as research. And it's often misused because of that.

I can understand that. In which case the popularization is likely better than the original because it spends proportionately more on the solid argument - that QWERTY didn't win just because it was first - than on the wrong one.

The truth is that there are network effects. But they are more transient than people give them credit for. And they mostly give rise to path dependence when things move fast, or you wind up at somewhere good enough that there is no compelling argument for an alternative.

In the case of technology, things move fast and don't STOP moving fast. And therefore it is possible to ride the tiger from network effects to path dependence, to monopoly. Microsoft's historical success was based on their explicit understanding of this. And exhibit A demonstrating that they did explicitly understand this is http://gunkies.org/wiki/Gordon_Letwin_OS/2_usenet_post. And I, for one, am on the opinion that without the infamous 2003 EU consent decree (you know, the one with big enough teeth that consent decrees were not simply a cost of doing business), Microsoft would still be on top.

So, despite appreciating what they have to say on the history of keyboards, we're likely in broader agreement. Particularly about the behavior of Microsoft in the 1990s.

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