Jul 24, 2002
Hit Any Key to Continue
Watching QVC (I’m ill, OK? I can be excused) I am stunned into silence at the demonstration of a PC keyboard which has all sorts of hot keys, allowing you to use your computer without resorting to drop-down menus, mouse clicks and other GUIs developed over the past twenty five years.
No no, now, instead of merely pressing, say, ctrl+z to undo something, or using the edit>undo drop down menu, you can simply press the “undo” button. And to save a document, just press “save”, or to switch between apps, press the “switch between apps” button. Is ctrl+s or alt+tab so hard?
Products like this dumb down the population, and undermine the notion of a consistent interface. If you get used to pressing hotkey #1 to print, becoming dependent on special idiot technology, how do you transfer to a machine that has a different keyboard, or transfer knowledge to an application that doesn’t feature on your smart keyboard?
People buy these things because they think they make life easier, but in fact they make life process-driven rather than concept-driven.
It’s like always using a teasmade and being unable to figure out how to boil a kettle, or constantly emailing friends and mailing lists in order to find the answers to simple queries that Google would be able to reveal in less than a second.
Learning how to use technology makes you more able to apply that technology over a broad range of challenges. You put in the effort to learn it once and then can use it hundreds of thousands of times, just like learning a language means you don’t have to depend on translators and dictionaries and speak-and-spell widgets any more when you go away.
Knowledge sets you free.
Related note: If google ever started charging users per search, I would be so screwed. I do it constantly – song lyrics, research, answers to things which are bugging me, just finding things out because I’m interested. How did we ever satisfy these curious urges before the internet came along? Scratching curious trivia and knowledge itches is probably the second best thing about the Internet, after communication. Oh, and pr0n, obviously.
