Many years ago, I was incarcerated for a series of mistakes that I needed to reflect on. During that time, I had limited access to paper and golf pencils, but wrote my heart out to a friend nearly every day. Hand writing a personal letter was born of desperation but quickly became a quiet pleasure. The familiarity and pride I had taken with the marks I put on paper--the slant, spacing and old-fashioned elegance of the lettering slowly returned from my younger years. The natural flow of honest thoughts came more readily and with little to no edits. I still feel freedom in writing today. Friends receive cards and letters often for little reason other than I am thinking of them.
I did through all undergraduate/grade school and I actually used to write with a fountain pen, almost all professors got mesmerized by the classical looking of my tests; on latter years I had to switch completely to LaTeX because of the time constraints of work/research but to this day I like the pen. I think that what Mr. Stephenson was trying to convey is: we had many thousands of years of natural selection pressure selecting manual motor skill that we relied upon for survival, and so it is natural that we feel that connection with using our hands to do work/art and we feel accomplished by seeing a good result and that positive sensation is the trait that was selected.
I did this experiment once in high school. Basically I knew I was pretty good at writing essays. However, in history class I’d be too lazy and would hand-write them. All of these papers would get a 3/5 no matter how much effort I put into them. I quickly realized it was my atrocious handwriting. The following classes, I start typing my papers instead. Long behold, my teacher gave me 5/5 for EVERY single paper after that. Not only that, but he’d often keep showing my paper as an example to every other class. Funny how a little aesthetic can change a person’s perspective so much.
I feel like the appeal of handwriting is purely nostalgia. If we grew up typing on computers to write instead of handwriting then we wouldn't care so much about putting pen to paper.
@@freedinner886 how can it be wrong, it's just a personal opinion about how I feel. You are obviously entitled to your own opinion. I still do enjoy handwriting more than typing sometimes, but I can't deny that my feelings about handwriting are because I did so much of it as a kid. That doesn't mean that typing fully replaces handwriting because it's a fairly different experience IMO. If I had a brain interface that transcribed my thoughts from my mind and made typing obsolete, would I still enjoy typing? I probably would, since I enjoy the tactile feeling of my hands on the keyboard and the auditory feedback from the sounds of the switches. I would type less as it wouldn't be as practical as the mind interface, but I would still love to type every now and then for the experience! But there is no denying that the love for the experience is only there because I have spent lots of time perfecting the skill. I feel like I wouldn't bother learning how to type and learn to enjoy it if I had the option of choosing between the mind interface dictation and the keyboard. That's just a similar way to how I feel about handwriting vs typing. Cheers
@@monissiddiqui6559 Contrary to popular belief, opinions can be wrong. And you're not merely putting forth an opinion like "chocolate is better than strawberry"; You said that your feelings inform your opinion about this factual matter. All it takes is a few moments to look up whether or not there are any studies on writing versus typing and what kind of effects are associated with either practice.
@@agaperion My opinions never made any scientific claims about whether writing is "better" or not. I just stated my feelings about my own experience on the topic just like the discussion in the video. If someone feels particularly strong about the objective aspects of a subjective experience, be my guest and prove why I'm "wrong". I just go based on feel and what is most practical. It's great there are some studies on the topic. Contrary to popular belief, most studies are not executed very well and it's harder to find replicated results especially for phenomena at higher levels of emergence. Human psychology and neuroscience are pretty up there and the "facts" in these fields are often blurry because of the complexity involved. So I doubt it would take a few moments to get to the root of these "facts" and even then my own personal opinion can be an edge case the studies didn't account for. My own overall personal experience is all that I am making any claims for, rather than of any of the specific conditions these studies may have fixed. That being said, if you have spent the time to sift through the research and have a few high quality studies in mind, please link! I'm open to learning more.
@@monissiddiqui6559 Fair enough. Perhaps I misinterpreted your point. It seemed to me you were saying that nostalgia was a better (meta?) explanation for the pro-handwriting attitude portrayed in the video in the sense that a social or cognitive scientist would seek to explain the affinity. I may have been arguing cross-purposes because I was focused more on the data which seem to indicate that there are some benefits to writing by hand; It engages the brain in different ways than typing. IMO, it's unsurprising because of the very nature of each behavior so, obviously, different brain modules will activate when performing different tasks.
Many years ago, I was incarcerated for a series of mistakes that I needed to reflect on. During that time, I had limited access to paper and golf pencils, but wrote my heart out to a friend nearly every day. Hand writing a personal letter was born of desperation but quickly became a quiet pleasure. The familiarity and pride I had taken with the marks I put on paper--the slant, spacing and old-fashioned elegance of the lettering slowly returned from my younger years. The natural flow of honest thoughts came more readily and with little to no edits. I still feel freedom in writing today. Friends receive cards and letters often for little reason other than I am thinking of them.
Thank you for this. Beautiful perspective
This guy is spot on ... Handwriting is a craft that can't be replaced...
Like an old japanese art of sword making ...
I did through all undergraduate/grade school and I actually used to write with a fountain pen, almost all professors got mesmerized by the classical looking of my tests; on latter years I had to switch completely to LaTeX because of the time constraints of work/research but to this day I like the pen.
I think that what Mr. Stephenson was trying to convey is: we had many thousands of years of natural selection pressure selecting manual motor skill that we relied upon for survival, and so it is natural that we feel that connection with using our hands to do work/art and we feel accomplished by seeing a good result and that positive sensation is the trait that was selected.
I did this experiment once in high school. Basically I knew I was pretty good at writing essays. However, in history class I’d be too lazy and would hand-write them. All of these papers would get a 3/5 no matter how much effort I put into them.
I quickly realized it was my atrocious handwriting. The following classes, I start typing my papers instead. Long behold, my teacher gave me 5/5 for EVERY single paper after that. Not only that, but he’d often keep showing my paper as an example to every other class. Funny how a little aesthetic can change a person’s perspective so much.
If you want security, don't use a fountain pen. Typically its ink goes away fast if your paper gets wet and fades faster with time.
Baroque cycle is the greatest trilogy ever
What a great topic , great question, hand writing is dying
Handwriting is not dying, we won't let it
people supporting handwriting in the comments while typing.
I feel like the appeal of handwriting is purely nostalgia. If we grew up typing on computers to write instead of handwriting then we wouldn't care so much about putting pen to paper.
Wrong
Lol
@@freedinner886 how can it be wrong, it's just a personal opinion about how I feel. You are obviously entitled to your own opinion. I still do enjoy handwriting more than typing sometimes, but I can't deny that my feelings about handwriting are because I did so much of it as a kid. That doesn't mean that typing fully replaces handwriting because it's a fairly different experience IMO.
If I had a brain interface that transcribed my thoughts from my mind and made typing obsolete, would I still enjoy typing? I probably would, since I enjoy the tactile feeling of my hands on the keyboard and the auditory feedback from the sounds of the switches. I would type less as it wouldn't be as practical as the mind interface, but I would still love to type every now and then for the experience! But there is no denying that the love for the experience is only there because I have spent lots of time perfecting the skill. I feel like I wouldn't bother learning how to type and learn to enjoy it if I had the option of choosing between the mind interface dictation and the keyboard.
That's just a similar way to how I feel about handwriting vs typing.
Cheers
@@monissiddiqui6559 Contrary to popular belief, opinions can be wrong. And you're not merely putting forth an opinion like "chocolate is better than strawberry"; You said that your feelings inform your opinion about this factual matter. All it takes is a few moments to look up whether or not there are any studies on writing versus typing and what kind of effects are associated with either practice.
@@agaperion My opinions never made any scientific claims about whether writing is "better" or not. I just stated my feelings about my own experience on the topic just like the discussion in the video. If someone feels particularly strong about the objective aspects of a subjective experience, be my guest and prove why I'm "wrong". I just go based on feel and what is most practical.
It's great there are some studies on the topic. Contrary to popular belief, most studies are not executed very well and it's harder to find replicated results especially for phenomena at higher levels of emergence. Human psychology and neuroscience are pretty up there and the "facts" in these fields are often blurry because of the complexity involved. So I doubt it would take a few moments to get to the root of these "facts" and even then my own personal opinion can be an edge case the studies didn't account for. My own overall personal experience is all that I am making any claims for, rather than of any of the specific conditions these studies may have fixed.
That being said, if you have spent the time to sift through the research and have a few high quality studies in mind, please link! I'm open to learning more.
@@monissiddiqui6559 Fair enough. Perhaps I misinterpreted your point. It seemed to me you were saying that nostalgia was a better (meta?) explanation for the pro-handwriting attitude portrayed in the video in the sense that a social or cognitive scientist would seek to explain the affinity. I may have been arguing cross-purposes because I was focused more on the data which seem to indicate that there are some benefits to writing by hand; It engages the brain in different ways than typing. IMO, it's unsurprising because of the very nature of each behavior so, obviously, different brain modules will activate when performing different tasks.