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"That’s why Doug tied that brick to a pencil — to prove a point. Of all the tools we’ve created to augment our intelligence, writing may be the most important.
by Afton 7y ago
"That’s why Doug tied that brick to a pencil — to prove a point. Of all the tools we’ve created to augment our intelligence, writing may be the most important. But when he “de-augmented” the pencil, by tying a brick to it, it became much, much harder to even write a single word. And when you make it hard to do the low-level parts of writing, it becomes near impossible to do the higher-level parts of writing: organizing your thoughts, exploring new ideas and expressions, cutting it all down to what’s essential. That was Doug’s message: a tool doesn’t “just” make something easier — it allows for new, previously-impossible ways of thinking, of living, of being."
Hah. I injured my hand a couple of years ago, and had to type with one hand for a couple of months. I could code review, I could participate in meetings, I could identify the source of a bug. But I could not write any but the simplest code. I was mystified. I could write emails and to some extent documents (typing of course slowed down a lot). But I became basically incapable of writing code. Using too much brain power on the physical act makes you have less left over for the CONTENT. Cool to see that this problem was understood much earlier.
- Aperocky 7y agoWe need a stdout from brain. We have such a fine grained control over our body, we should be able to find a signal stream or two to interface with some computer system.
- lucasmullens 7y agoIsn't that what Neuralink is trying to do?
- nerfhammer 7y agocheck if there's a USART on the pinout diagram of the brain. if we're lucky it will be rs232 compatible. then all we need is an FTDI or similar chip to interface with USB which should give you a tty in /dev.
- judge2020 7y agocat /dev/bra1n > /dev/null 2>&1
- Cthulhu_ 7y agoI dunno, I kinda like typing but at the same time it's not fast enough sometimes. Is there any research being done into more efficient typing? I mean beyond different keyboard layouts (I've never tried dvorak and co) and keyboards (I like my wireless mac keyboard well enough).
- dkersten 7y agoI seem to be quite a visual thinker (I love a whiteboard or pen & paper to think in boxes and lines) and I really enjoyed working with Max/MSP as a minimal typing (it’s not quite typing-free) programming environment. I know visual languages don’t get much love around here (largely for good reasons), but I wonder would that be a good solution to what you describe, especially if using a touchscreen rather than a mouse.