Why the First Laptop Had Such a Hard Time Catching On
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
The big boss might have two. Everyone is who is anyone has his own. You are clearly a junior manager if you share a secretary. Only the peons type.
This changed. It changed slowly. For years, senior people did not type their own email, or even read it on a screen. A secretary would print it out, and the exec would dictate, live or to a recorded, any responses. Did the exec know how to type? No. Why should he? Having a keyboard is a sign that you don't have any power.
Long nails indicate that you don't do manual work. High heels mean you don't walk long distances. An expensive watch means you can afford one -- it tells the time about as accurately and about as reliably as a mid-priced or cheap watch.
How does it change? Very simply: when the people who are high-status do a certain thing, people who want to be like them copy it. When technical entrepreneurs became rich, people copied them. Do successful Wall Streeters carry Blackberries? Everybody else did, too.
Status, yes. And sexism, too: typing is women's work. Low status.
Just as importantly, today not knowing how to use a computer is a bad sign in the workplace, one that will cost you your job.
I contract my time at a place with a fair number of very senior people (age 50+). A few years ago it wasn't like that, most people were under 35 and having grown up with computers had a reasonable mastery of basic computer skills.
When the contract changed the client desired a more skilled labor pool and thus amped up the requirements for most of the positions. What happened? A flood of computer illiterate old-school types who tried to get the few remaining "youngsters" to do the bulk of the work.
It went over very poorly with the younger workers, the contractor and in the end the customer. It was made known that if you didn't have basic computer skills you wouldn't have a job...to be verified by a test before beginning regular work (given after the new hire training period). The result? Something like 85% turnover in the aged 50+ pool inside of six months. The group they have now is not only much better at these basic skills, but a better cross section of truly needed skills anyway.
Watching all this go down made me think of my father, who in his late 60s purchased his first computer (in the late early 2000s) and had the intellectual curiosity to spend hours every day learning to type, fiddling with various settings, changing the screen savers and background graphics...till he was literate enough that he could do pretty much whatever he wanted to do with the machine. He knew the times had changed and it was up to him to get his act together.
Reading this I can't help but think of the old "hello world" computer program humor [1] predicated on the idea that the higher the you went up the corporate hierarchy the less computer savvy that person would be:
New Manager
===================
10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD"
20 END
Middle Manager
===================
mail -s "Hello, world." bob@b12
Bob, could you please write me a program that prints "Hello, world."?
I need it by tomorrow.
^D
Senior Manager
===================
% zmail jim
I need a "Hello, world." program by this afternoon.
Chief Executive
===================
% letter
letter: Command not found.
% mail
To: ^X ^F ^C
% help mail
help: Command not found.
% damn!
!: Event unrecognized
% logout
Actually, there's a huge difference in the accuracy of high-end and cheap watches. The cheap watches are way better.
I was lucky enough to be given a Grid compass machine to do my job in the 80's. It was a godsend as a remote tech who had to go places and do things to computers while maintaining a security profile. My own terminal, my own stash of notes/profiles/logs, etc. All had to be checked in, after a 7 or 8 day trip around the US to all and sundry terminal locations.
Damn thing was heavy, and had very little RAM/storage, all things considered. I was lucky to have a stack of floppies for it, of course, but that was more bulk to the luggage.
It was one of the first machines on which I built my C chops, as a coder. I've still got muscle-memory for its dodgy * location, I think.
I lugged the thing around for years, then .. suddenly .. back at HQ .. the Atari Portfolio.
:)
Instant upgrade.
I still use an OrangeRedAmber as my term color. Oh, how I'd love to have a few Grid screens around to plug into things, it was truly a bask of radiative glare.. ;)
I could understand secretaries instantaneously loosing respect if they see their bosses typing with one finger.
It happened to me with one operator of a lathe when he discovered I had no idea or cared how to program it because I was "engineer"(I had other work to do). I had to study the thing on a weekend for regaining the respect from those people on my team.
Imagine being in the war and your life depends on a person(e.g a sergeant) and the only thing you know about this person is that he is incompetent on what you know to do well... not good.
A boss or coworker who can't use a computer is largely forgivable. A boss or coworker who refuses to learn is hard to respect and, by extension, hard to work for or with.
I'm wondering when this changed to include all kids. I remember doing Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing on my home computer at around 6, then again at school in grade 2. This would have been in the early 90s, and every kid at my school took typing classes once a week. By grade 3 or 4 they were teaching us Basic on the Apple IIe. Around that time as well, school assignments had to be typed and printed off for submission. Did other people have the same experience, with computers being a part of your official early education?
That's not actually a word. It seems probable you meant classism or something similar.
And quirky -- why would you type when you can have someone do it for you?
* I knew a few top execs who were happy to type (this was a software company). They (and many others of us in the company) had dial-up terminals at home. These were used to access the company mainframe.
* The main business cases in 1983 for the PC were typing letters/memos, primitive filing, and spreadsheets. These are things that top execs typically delegated to secretaries and middle managers.
* This thing cost more than multiple automobiles.
* The Military used male secretaries for typing. They also had more money than they knew what to do with in 1983.
For those who don't travel, it would have been difficult to justify the greater expense.
And who takes flights around the country? Executives.
The secretaries have their computers on their desktop, they stay at home. So the computer had to be pitched as useful, somehow, to an Executive traveller..
There was really a sort of division about the very expensive computers being something you took with you instead of locked at home at the office, at the very beginning, but nowadays of course usability has demolished the cultural head and we've all got mega-buck$ invested in our thin, delicate slabs.
I convinced my dad to buy an Apple ][ for the family, primarily by demonstrating VisiCalc to him. He caught on right away, but it was painful watching him hunt-and-peck on the keyboard for years while he started to learn to type.
Can anyone explain the capitals in this title? I'm guessing they are correct. But they look erratic / strange / stupid from this pov. Not my native language, so where can I read up on how you'd decide whether to hit shift or not - hoping that it isn't arbitrary.
There's no "correct" outcome for an all-caps title, it's a stylistic choice. Neither right nor wrong. Another example of a stylistic choice is The Register's oft-exercised habit of emphasizing! a! title! like! this!.
> where can I read up on how you'd decide whether to hit shift or not - hoping that it isn't arbitrary.
Sorry, you can't read a rule on this practice, Because It Is Entirely Arbitrary.
Not that I read it much, of late -- could never stand Orlowski, and recently the site has been defined as "the Daily Mail of Tech", so it's not like I have much of an incentive...
I confess I never noticed the contexts, only that they existed. They're common enough that I suspect there's a macro at the ready in the El Reg editing apps: text =~ s/(\w+)/$1!/g
> Not that I read it much, of late ...
Same here -- the stylistic memes begin to wear on one.
Don't say that.
Since most newspapers and magazines are struggling to survive, maybe they don't do it any more, but for decades they made all their publications conform to style guides which were often as lengthy as books. Other organizations and communities of writers also used style guides. Three famous style guides:
(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Dictionary_of_Modern_English_... a.k.a. Fowler's; and
(2) A Chicago Manual of style (which might have been limited mainly to academic writing; do not remember); and
(3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Style a.k.a. Strunk and White.
Also the New York Times maintained their own style guide, which I seem to recall was also sold to the general public. The whole point of these guides was to make written English more consistent.
As to the specific question of capitalization style, there is one very dominant style: namely, articles ("the", "a" and "an"), prepositions and conjunctions ("and", "or", "but" and maybe one more I cannot remember right now) are not capitalized, but everything else is.
Of course I know that, in fact my AP Style Guide is within arm's reach, and I regularly use Strunk & White as a source for a particular style position, but (apart from "make every word count") these references don't apply to online text, the present topic. Online style isn't print style -- the former isn't formalized to the degree that print style is.
I will know when there's a formal online style, widely accepted, because the first principle will be "no more gray text on a gray background!" I won't hold my breath.
http://www.grammar-monster.com/lessons/capital_letters_title...
So, "a" and "the" are not capitalized because they are articles. But what about "on"? That's a preposition, isn't it? And according to this (and most) style guides you don't capitalize prepositions.
But in this title, "on" is not being used as a preposition. It's part of a compound verb, "catching on". Verbs are capitalized, so both those words are capitalized. Another good clue here is that "on" is the last word in the title, so it's not likely to be a preposition ("pre-position").
There is a subtlety here: "catch on" or "catching on" is often a compound verb meaning "becoming popular", but in a different context, it may be a simple verb and preposition. Consider these two headlines:
Sticky Notes are Catching On (becoming popular, "catching on" is a compound verb so both words capitalized)
Sticky Notes are Catching on Tables (getting stuck to tables, "catching" is a simple verb and "on" is a preposition, so "on" is not capitalized)
Specifically, I didn't capitalize "are", but the page I linked to says you should capitalize "Are". So using their style (which is probably what I'd use too if I'd been paying more attention), my examples would be:
Sticky Notes Are Catching On
Sticky Notes Are Catching on Tables
Either way would be correct under one style guide or another. Wikipedia has a chart comparing various title case styles:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_case#Headings_and_public... (edit: stordoff posted this earlier)
Here's an interesting article on About.com:
http://grammar.about.com/od/tz/g/Title-Case.htm
And an online title case converter (with its own set of rules):
http://individed.com/code/to-title-case/
As I mentioned, this search will tell you more than you ever wanted to know on the topic:
The difference I see is that the smartphone and the tablet all use laptop concepts (keyboard, visual display, etc). People literally went from not knowing how to type (which is NOT intuitive) to typing on a keyboard. The biggest difference now is multi-touch. But the reason multi-touch caught on, was because it was a intuitive interface to computer-human interaction. I had to take a course in grade school in order to use a keyboard, I don't for multi-touch.
In other words, the laptop (and as people have pointed out, actually the desktop) was a revolution in technology. Mobile devices seem to be much more an evolution.
I think that's a pretty big assumption. But you are completely correct about touch and intuition.
You should try using a single touch keyboard. Keyboards are very much multitouch.
I am yet to see a more useful reason for multitouch to exist than text input. Not that one gesture everyone has now been imprinted with. Something else that's not gimmicky.
Please give me an example, because despite being part of the touchscreen and multitouch early adopters (I had a Palm, five different WinMo devices, and imported a G1 before Android phones came to Europe), I am yet to see one thing I (or anyone else) can do faster on a multitouch panel than I can do with a keyboard and mouse. I'm not saying these legacy input devices are perfect, but stupid simple glass panels are definitely more cumbersome for this aging mind.
Slice through a banana, pear and pineapple at the same time on Fruit Ninja.
The game was originally touch (or stylus) based, but the best scores are all done through mouse to aim & keyboard to press. This game involves swiping, pointing, spinning, and more accurate following of drawn cursors on screen. I think to line up your draw, and make an accurate motion, the mouse will still win.
Edit: Correction: Stylus is also just as popular, but the keyboard is still used.
Are we talking about the same multitouch?
I do agree with you about "I am yet to see a more useful reason for multitouch to exist than text input." to an extent.
Three examples that are much easier on multi-touch:
1. Google Maps (pinch, zoom, pan)
2. Images (pan, zoom, slide-next)
3. Scrolling large lists
1. Scroll wheel is faster and more precise than pinch, panning by dragging the mouse is about equivalent for panning.
2. Again, panning with the mouse is about equivalent and zoom is easier. A gesture like slide-next can be done with right click + flick.
3. Flinging the mouse wheel is as easy as flinging a finger once. If you want to scroll really far you can middle click, move the mouse down, and wait, vs. flinging over and over.
1. Scroll wheels only let you scroll in discrete steps, which the human visual system is bad at handling. It pales compared to inertial touch scrolling, which actually works exactly like objects in real life, the kind we've been evolving to look at and track for ages. You get instant analog feedback. It also lets you scroll in 2D rather than on one axis. Infinite canvas apps like graphical tools are far easier to use with multitouch than with separate pan and zoom controls.
2. I've found two-finger panning far easier on the wrists than click and drag. Add in three fingered swipes (i.e. switching between virtual desktops horizontally, zooming out your windows vertically) and it's ridiculously easy to get around. On Windows, task switching was always a pain. On a Mac, I have a dozen windows open easily at any given time.
3. Flinging over and over is not a big deal because a) there is non-linear acceleration on the gestures and b) after flinging twice, the third fling will have vastly increased speed. It is much faster than waiting for that middle click thing. The middle click thing is also limited by where you click. If the window is near the edge, you can't go as fast.
Finally, multitouch gestures can be combined, and Apple has done an amazing job in the drivers for this. I can click on a file with my thumb to start dragging it, and then while holding it, do a two finger scroll or a three finger flick to another desktop or window at the same time. It works so well, you just do it naturally and only realize later how damn clever the code is to be able to disambiguate your touches.
I tried using a "multi touch" Samsung laptop too. It was a complete piece of crap, which would constantly detect phantom gestures, and was entirely context independent. For example, it would trigger rotation in apps where it made no sense at all (e.g. the browser), and the trackpad surface was so sticky my finger skipped over it constantly.
Don't knock multitouch until you've tried an actually good implementation, with software designed to make it shine.
Having used a mighty mouse which has a miniature trackball for a mousewheel though, I'd disagree about it being equivalent though, for the simple reason that dragging fingers on a small wheel or ball with real inertia is more restrictive than on a large free flat surface with simulated inertia. Particularly being able to fling at high speed and then catch it again, stopping on a dime, is actually a really fast way to get around.
Of course, it's only the confluence of good hardware, drivers and applications that makes this shine, and on that point we agree. But it's undeniable that Apple has an amazing lead on this, and using a magic trackpad on OS X feels like the biggest upgrade to how I interact with a desktop since Exposé.
My dad had 2 secretaries when I was growing up in the 1970s. He was a mechanical engineer with an MBA. And he didn't know how to type.
What is superficial, but denotes status among hackers?
Having an expensive standing desk when everyone else sits.
Having a shaved head when that's not the societal norm. Having long hair (male) or particularly short hair (female). Interestingly dyed hair for either.
Extreme coffee ordering used to be a status marker; now it's widespread and isn't, so much. What was once an indicator that you lived in a rich urban core is now an indicator that Starbucks has opened a branch in your WalMart.
Running a Mac when the company standard was a Windows box; running an Air when the standard was an MBP. The first generation iPhone, and for a couple of weeks, the most recent. (Then everybody else has them.)
Claiming more physical space is a status marker; humans seem to be wired for that along with all the other primates. Having more space and not doing anything with it is a more powerful marker.
Siri and similar voice-recognition assistants could become the new secretaries. If they improve significantly, look for an always-on version that looks for a keyword trigger and talks back through a speaker. Having an invisible servant would be a serious status marker, but only if it becomes both reliable and ostentatious. Having the quiet space necessary to do this regularly is a marker by itself.
I like your list, but doesn't the low incremental cost of a virtualized assistant, as available to Joe Biden as Joe the Plumber, take this out as a marker?
I suspect most markers going forward are going to have to be physical things that are more rare, and frankly somewhat useless. 6 legged genetically engineered green pocket pigs with stupid haircuts and matching sunglasses kind of thing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Model_100
Writers loved these things because they lasted for ages on a set of AA cells.