Computers were clearly a male invention, something there primarily to increase production, and help those (mostly males) at the top destroy the world a lot faster than they were doing before computers arrived.
I've been asking myself (and others) what a computer designed (and invented?) by a woman would look like. Okay more than just look like, how would it function? It amazes how often women struggle with computers when in my experience most men seem to understand them intuitively (or is it just that men never ask for help!).
The answer that I've gotten from a number of people is that a woman would not invent a computer. I think that's it, but I'm still intrigued by my own question (ah thank you) though and would love a really creative answer. For a start, I think it would have more inputs than just a mouse and a keyboard (maybe some frikkin voice recognition :-). Something more intuitive - how do you take the motion of picking cherries and turn it into a computer input device? Okay, hopefully I'll come back to this question...
Monday, July 27, 2009
Mamma always told me...
To learn to touch type.
And being a young male adolescent and the last child (see, I would be touch typing if I had a younger brother.... clearly), I can clearly remember sitting in the dining room at the computer saying, now worries mum, when I grow up keyboards will be a thing of the past. I was firm believer in voice recognition software, and to be fair, we did have a very basic package in the house (yep, even back in the day) and it could capture the gist of what I was saying, but clearly things never progressed much beyond that.
I guess though that a software that is to be sold on the mass market would never be able to adjust or adapt to the millions of different voices in the world, not to mention languages, not to mention accents. And that's the thing about a successful product it can be used by everyone everywhere. So here I sit, not being able to touch type (as well as I'd like) and without any flippin voice recognition.
So now I have installed addictive typing on both my work and home computers and am trying to do at least 10 minutes a day. I'm getting better, but I'm sure as my mother predicted, it is much harder to relearn to type properly than to just do it.
Rest assured that if I ever have children they will be persuaded to learn to type, but I'll at least be giving them a Dvorak keyboard, because this whole qwerty nonsense is way past its sell by date.
Damn it, keep typing those b's with both pointing fingers...
And being a young male adolescent and the last child (see, I would be touch typing if I had a younger brother.... clearly), I can clearly remember sitting in the dining room at the computer saying, now worries mum, when I grow up keyboards will be a thing of the past. I was firm believer in voice recognition software, and to be fair, we did have a very basic package in the house (yep, even back in the day) and it could capture the gist of what I was saying, but clearly things never progressed much beyond that.
I guess though that a software that is to be sold on the mass market would never be able to adjust or adapt to the millions of different voices in the world, not to mention languages, not to mention accents. And that's the thing about a successful product it can be used by everyone everywhere. So here I sit, not being able to touch type (as well as I'd like) and without any flippin voice recognition.
So now I have installed addictive typing on both my work and home computers and am trying to do at least 10 minutes a day. I'm getting better, but I'm sure as my mother predicted, it is much harder to relearn to type properly than to just do it.
Rest assured that if I ever have children they will be persuaded to learn to type, but I'll at least be giving them a Dvorak keyboard, because this whole qwerty nonsense is way past its sell by date.
Damn it, keep typing those b's with both pointing fingers...
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