ONA Issues

I spend most workdays in front of a keyboard, typing into a variety of boxes: a CMS, social networks, email fields, instant message windows, group chat apps. Group chat use in particular has ballooned—I used Campfire and Hipchat in other workplaces, and with friends, but Slack has absorbed a surprising amount of utility, time and output. Chat, like instant messaging, seems to allow for a looseness not always permissible over email, where you can’t immediately jump in with elaboration. It also encourages volume. Typing into a chat is less like sending a message than jumping into a stream, or chiming in to a verbal conversation. A point is made or a purpose conveyed through a dozen short messages and responses instead of a single encompassing email. Timing matters as much as anything.

This has always been true of chat and instant messaging, and has been reflected in the new and fresh language we use on them. But now, with the similar and nearby experience of chatting and communicating on a phone, often without words, I feel a new pressure. The keyboard, which I’ve been mashing for twenty years, has begun to feel like an obstacle. After two decades of learning how to type better, I’ve started typing worse.

I don’t mean slower, or with more typos. I mean nonsense. Typgnuig like thsi.Mashging my fingers luike theyr made otu of rubber. Jsut pummlegin the keybords with al thw wrong fingers, enver even giving my hafns the time to fing the righ position.

-John Hermann

 I’m Becoming a Slack-fingered Idiot and I Guess That’s Fine - The Awl

(Source: The Awl)