I was just sitting down and wondering that we type so much. I was suprised to note that google does not have a single relevant link when I search for “we type so much”. Now, we do type so much. In fact I’m typing so much right now. Where does all this go to? Most of the words I type into, goes into word documents, excel sheets and emails. Outside work, it goes into my twitter page, my blog posts and of course, my IM conversations. That’s not the end of it, I type messages on my mobile device, emails and post tweets from my mobile device as well.
Why do we type so much? Is it out of our need to communicate? I don’t think any of our earlier generations would have typed so much. I never typed all that much when I was in school. I still remember that teachers used to be paranoid about a bad handwriting (not that I had one..).
Now I just type away. I never carry a pen, and I’m one of those guys who borrows a pen every time I need one. Why should I be carrying a pen around after all? Isn’t it enough that I carry my mobile device and sometimes even my laptop around? Looking back, writing was of course a simple and lovely pastime. But what happened of all that I wrote down on pieces of paper? They flew away into nothingness, or got lost in the passage of time.
But if I had typed all that stuff…they would have remained for ever on cyberspace (unless of course, I explicitly deleted them in some manner, few stuff I typed don’t go away even if I did try deleting them..) So that brings us to the first point which supports me typing out stuff. Permanence. Stuff that you type out remains for as long as you want it to (unless I forget to save, or if it was not auto saved in the first place.)
I might write stuff down because I want someone to read it. I write down things on a piece of paper. I can show it around to people, maybe even distribute copies of it. But then, isn’t it just easier to type it out and share it with everyone you know (and a lot many more people whom I wouldn’t) because I have a lot more options of distributing it. I could mail it, share it on my blog, maybe even put it out on a knol at google, just to prove that I am an expert in the area. I guess you call it readership.
Its easier to type out stuff than write. Now this is purely debatable..but the reason I decided to put this down was because of a small buying decision I had to make the other day. I thought I would by a writing table to help me write out on my PC, but then decided halfway through that it wasn’t worth it at all because I obviously type more than I write and its easier for me to type out than make my computer understand what I am writing.
Search results. I think I am seriously running out of ideas here..but here goes, whatever I write online improves my visibility on google and that matters a lot. Now why should it? Well, I don’t know..maybe I want to be a popular personal brand..nah! I just want to be on google’s search results…
It is honestly cheaper to write online considering all the other benefits it provides. The cost of distributing printed/written material to such a huge readership would be unimaginable (or rather, I’m not that good at math. You might want to try Wolframalpha here…)
And of course so that I can stumbleupon such a silly article (shameless self promotion) and make you read it. and so that I could waste some of my time writing such nonsense in the first place..
Confabulations 