Touch screens: The death of touch typing?
Take a moment to watch this popular Web video of how a 2.5 year old adroitly handles a brand new iPad that her dad gave her to play with. Remember: She's 2.5 years old! If you're reading this blog, chances are you're in your 20s or older -- and I'd bet the closest touch interface you came in contact with at age 2 was nothing. Now, I have an 18-month-old daughter who loves to handle my iPhone. She knows how to open apps and how to play with the ones that make animal sounds. She also knows how to set the music on the iPod we keep in her room to play her sleepy-time music.
And today, we get news from the Gartner research group that these touch interfaces for computers are going to be quite popular for PCs in five years time. I believe it.
From Gartner:
"What we're going to see is the younger generation beginning to use touchscreen computers ahead of enterprises," said Leslie Fiering, research vice president at Gartner. "By 2015, we expect more than 50 percent of PCs purchased for users under the age of 15 will have touchscreens, up from fewer than 2 percent in 2009. On the other hand, we are predicting that fewer than 10 percent of PCs sold to enterprises in 2015 for mainstream knowledge workers will have touchscreens."
Many have lamented the death of penmanship (is it really taught in school anymore?) as the keyboard and computers rose in prominence in education. Now I wonder in a generation, or less, if we'll be lamenting the death of touch typing skills in the face of touch screen computing?
Am I crazy? With voice recognition vastly improving, people will be able to "write" with their voices more easily. Already, word recognition software can automatically complete your words, so you don't have to bother typing the whole word out. What do you think?
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Comments
Granted, I am a whole different generation, having been using computers since 1967 (when I did my own programming in Fortran IV), but I have also had years of experience with having to give dictation. I hated it, and I don't think I would enjoy it any more dictating to a computer than to a dictaphone. Touch typing, I know how to spell and punctuate. I don't trust any computer to distinguish homophones and phrase breaks through voice recognition. So, yes, it is a wonderful thing for personal use, but business use would do well to stick with manual data entry.
Posted by: City Redux | April 7, 2010 1:55 PM
Surely by now we've all seen the use of touch-screen interfaces at fast-food restaurants and supermarkets, and noticed that the employees are no more adept at using the new devices, even at times less adept versus older technology. The only benefit I can perceive from the change is an increased revenue to the manufacturers and suppliers of touch-screen systems at an increased cost to the establishment and consequently the customer. Indeed, it seems that since there is no longer a "skill" required to use the systems, we have witnessed a dumbing-down of the service personnel at these establishments. At certain Carl's Jr rastaurants in Texas (not to mention every major supermarket and superstore chain), there's not even an attendant att he register anymore, as customer are made to maneuver their way through the menus and effect payment with only the slightest evidence of supervision. When even a 2-year-old can manage these systems, it makes me wonder if there will be any motivation to educate the next generation at all, or if we should just plunge them directly into minimum-wage slavery at the age of 9.
Posted by: Hal B | April 7, 2010 3:25 PM
I am sure that voice recognition will definitely change the way we "write", just like computers and keyboards did in the past and like touch screen computing does it today. On one hand, I am so looking forward to this new technological advancement, but on the other, I am also worried about its impact on education of the future generations. Will children learn to write at all?
Posted by: Goranka | April 8, 2010 5:57 AM