Handwriting and the Singularity from James W. Ziskin

Handwritten or typed? Some writers, even today, will hand write a first draft. Some have 3d grade penmanship from the atrophy our handwriting has suffered. Do you still handwrite any part of your writing process or are you all type, all the time? 

I intended to write this week’s post by hand to prove a point, but it was going to take me five times longer to do it that way. So, in the end, I took the easy way out and decided to type it on a keyboard instead. And I’ll tell you why.

First of all, I would have had to use a physical dictionary if I’d wanted to check my spelling, which is impekable, but still. And, of course, I’d probably already have had a cramp in my hand if I’d been doing this the old-fashioned way.

Some people think writing by hand makes the experience more personal and somehow more virtuous than using a computer or a voice-to-text app. Pshaw! Those are the same folks who believe walking to the furniture store to carry that new queen-size sofa bed back home on their backs is preferable to borrowing a friend’s pick-up truck for the job. Or maybe just order it online using a keyboard.

While it’s true that some technological advances feel more like slippery steps closer to the singularity, typewriters and keyboards ain’t one of them. They’re not going to take over the world and subjugate us all with their tapping and clicking. Okay, we might break a fingernail, but that’s about it.

Here are a few benefits keyboards afford us:

1. Thanks to keyboards, we can erase our errors without leaving a trace. No one needs to know we’re clumsy typists. But you can’t erase pen ink, and who among us hasn’t torn a perfectly fine sheet of paper in a fit of pencil-erasing zeal?
2. Bad penmanship is a scourge of the past. We no longer need to strain our eyes and patience trying to read our own chicken scratchings. (Except on a grocery list.)
3. Spelling errors are (mostly) under control, thanks to the myriad technologies that we access via keyboards.
4. Keyboards also free us from the drudgery of alphabetical order. QWERTY is much more efficient than ABCDE, isn’t it? (AZERTY, si vous êtes français.)
5. And who can forget that pianos became much easier to play once they added keyboards. I upgraded my spinet last year and no longer need to whack away with eighty-eight handheld, felt-tipped hammers.

Let’s be honest. We rarely need handwriting these days. We can scan documents with our phones, dictate speech-to-text, and listen to text-to-speech. We can ask our digital assistants (future overlords) for all manner of assistance, including writing. And, of course, we can even create fonts that mimic our own handwriting. Smudged ink will go the way of the dinosaurs.

But don’t fret. Handwriting will always have its place for signing documents. Oh, wait. There are digital signatures now. Damn!

Perhaps when the singularity comes, a robot will forge our signature and sell our house out from under us. In that case, we won’t need that queen-size sofa bed.

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