How lame can you get.
> But catching[clip]
>
> I wrote a letter to the ACT folks in 1982 telling them that keyboarding
> was the future and that my essays would be less-than-my-best if I had
> to write them down with a pen. I asked them if I could use a
> (self-provided) typewriter during the test. They told me to go to
> hell. I printed them and got into the schools of my choice.
I know many could compose with a typewriter; I couldn't¸ though it got less difficult with a Selectric. But it occurs to me that the earlier claim by someone about the technology between the person & the text may be accurate: though it explains the superiority rather than the inferiority of the computer. Pencil/pen interferes much more between writer & wording than a computer does; writing on a computer can restore some of the closeness between thought and materialization (in text) than can hand-writing. The pen always was a pretty clumsy bit of technology; in _practice_ the computer is technology-free, for the technology is invisible: one's fingers move with one's thought and presto it's on the screen.
And speech recognition is getting powerful enough so that 'writers' of the future will have the same advantages that speakers have now. Some 'illiterate' students I had would have been A-students had they been able to dictate their papers. The 'superiority' of some writing students was a function of their physical dexterity rather than of their better grasp of English. Their was less of a temporal gap between thought and fixation in text.
Carrol
(I am of course assuming touch-typing; I don't know about those who haven't learned the skill.)