{"id":233,"date":"2009-02-05T13:07:00","date_gmt":"2009-02-05T18:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/2009\/02\/05\/pens-suck\/"},"modified":"2009-02-05T13:07:02","modified_gmt":"2009-02-05T18:07:02","slug":"pens-suck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/2009\/02\/05\/pens-suck\/","title":{"rendered":"Pens Suck"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In <strong>1987<\/strong>, Alan kay said,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>By the way, Sketchpad was the first system where it was discovered that the light pen was a very bad input device.   The blood runs out of your hand in about 20 seconds, and leaves it numb.  And in spite of that it&#8217;s been re-invented at least 90 times in the last 25 years.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Almost 50 years after Sketchpad, you can find a light pen at any computer store today.  Today, these light pens are used to <em>supplement<\/em> more circulation-friendly input devices.  Maybe that&#8217;s enough to solve the problems Sketchpad had.<\/p>\n<p>Personally, I think <strong>the metaphor of a the pen is too blindingly strong<\/strong>.  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.randsinrepose.com\/archives\/2007\/10\/16\/the_gel_dilemma.html\">People love their pens<\/a>, because they grew up with them.  I don&#8217;t accept that they are the pinnacle of input.  We can do better then copying a pointy stick filled with dye.<\/p>\n<p>But I have my own biases and unique experiences.   I am <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ninds.nih.gov\/disorders\/dysgraphia\/dysgraphia.htm\">dysgraphic<\/a> &#8212; I have trouble writing legibly by hand, and spelling.  To me a pen is not something that <em>feels good<\/em> or puts me in the zone.  It&#8217;s something that gets in the way of expressing my ideas.  But fundamentally, <strong>isn&#8217;t every input device a barrier between your mind and the medium?<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 1987, Alan kay said, By the way, Sketchpad was the first system where it was discovered that the light pen was a very bad input device. The blood runs out of your hand in about 20 seconds, and leaves it numb. And in spite of that it&#8217;s been re-invented at least 90 times in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,12,8],"tags":[333,334,222,277,335],"class_list":["post-233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-accessibility","category-design","category-usability","tag-alan-kay","tag-doing-with-images-makes-symbols","tag-dysgraphia","tag-ergonomics","tag-light-pens"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}