#3: Q.W.E.R.T.Y

Clickety Clack. Trying to be a proper writer.

This will have to be a really quick one because I have a new toy that I ought to be playing with. It is still in the box because it is just too pretty to be brought out and risk having my children get their grubby paws on it, and I am enjoying admiring it while it is bright and sparkling. It is a typewriter style clickety-clack keyboard. Honestly it sounds just like typing on a typewriter, like being a ‘proper writer,’ you know. I have wanted a typewriter for so very long, and this was a more practical solution I suppose! Just look at it:

So, what is in my tabs right now?

1. I was intrigued by why we call our keyboards QWERTY. If you look at the topmost row of letters on your computer keyboard, you’ll see where the QWERTY got its name. So people have been using this configuration for about 144 years. There was a long standing myth that this was designed as these were the most commonly used letters (are you noting this down, wordle-rs?) and this design would make typing more efficient and faster. But then we were told that this is really false, that Christopher Scholes designed it this way to slow people down because fast typing could jam the machines. So, they deliberately put the common letters far apart from each other. But more recent evidence from Japanese researchers found that in fact the design developed over several years in collaboration with telegraph operators who worked with Morse code. The layout changed often from the early alphabetical arrangement, before the final configuration came into being.

2. I was reading about TAP, a one-handed gadget that fits over your fingers like rubbery brass knuckles and connects wirelessly to your smartphone. It’s supposed to free you from clunky physical keyboards and act as a go-anywhere typing interface. I would love to try it even though I am not sure if I would like it or if I would miss the visceral physicality of a keyboard, but what is more interesting to me is how we adopt new technologies, and why certain tools and technologies are adopted more easily than others. My research in human-centered technology used to be about this, how we make tools that fit neatly into people’s lives, and are easier to adopt and adapt. There is some more about Qwerty here, and other contenders, some of which have not been as popular.

3. One of these alternatives was DVORAK layout that was patented in the 1940s and here is someone telling all the Qwerty users that we are not missing on much. The U.S. Navy conducted a study in the 1940s, demonstrating that the Dvorak was vastly superior (although some researchers have now shown that it was deeply flawed). But eventually it was mostly about the economies of scale because people had been using the Qwerty was so long that it had become cheaper to produce.

4. Circling back to my fascination with typewriters, if you are interested here are some photos of famous authors with their typewriters, just the kind of thing I often find at midnight and then before I know it I have lost couple of hours absolutely fascinated by how typewriters revolutionised 20th century American literature. For instance, it opened up opportunities for women, especially women writers, and allowed poets such as E.E. Cummings to experiment with spacing. There is also the history of typewriter here.

5. As a side note, did you know that e.e. cummings does not have to have lower case letters but can be written as E.E. Cummings? I recently found out. I have been revisiting some poems by him, and how he subverted common themes and forms. Like his poem ‘spring omnipotent goddess’ where instead of praising spring as a time of rebirth and new life, Cummings describes it as ‘slattern of seasons’ with ‘dirty legs’ and a ‘muddy / petticoat’ although I found it quite problematic with its reference to women’s bodies. And then I started reading more about the misogyny and sexism in his poems, and that was a rabbit hole to go down for sure.

Anyhoo, saying all this, a tool or a typewriter does not a writer make. There is nothing like a ‘proper writer’. If you write, you are a writer, even though sometimes we all just write for ourselves. This year, I have been thinking more about the value of work and how we create work that we consider valuable and good, as compared to how we often find worth and value in our work from external commendations. Sometimes we get so caught up in reviews, and in what other people think, that we can lose our inner voice. And what is really important is that we keep hold of this inner compass and keep our focus on it, whatever our creative outlet might be. It is what gives us the courage that allows us to say that yes, I believe in my work, and I think it is worth doing.

Are you creating anything new at the moment?

Keep doing what you are doing! And, back very soon.

Pragya