Jo Walton ([info]papersky) wrote,
@ 2003-05-28 10:10:00
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Brain-computer interface
I know my hands have something to do with the words I think that appear on the screen. The proof of this is that the letters on the keyboard are slowly vanishing.

My old keyboard, my stealth keyboard, the keyboard of my old puter, my 286, has no letters on it at all. It's not that it was made before the alphabet, it had letters once, in 1992, when it was new, but I wore them off, absorbed them from the keys, dissolved them with my fingertips, sucked them in. It has a Q, a Z, a line of what used to be V, no arrows, no punctuation, the numbers sit there in solitary composure of knowing I leave them alone.

This new keyboard, an IBM, clicky, in a year's use has already lost the A, most of the O, part of the S, the N, E and R are getting ragged. I pretend to be puzzled by this, but secretly I love it. Keyboard letters contain vital nutrients for my metabolism. They are where I get my ideas from, they keep my creativity flowing. They go in and out through my fingers and leave the keyboard burnished and empty.

It's clearly magic realism, because it ought to work like that. It's not in the least remarkable. One would only need to remark on it if it didn't happen. Now I look closely, I can see signs of wear on the Y, M and H. Come to me, keyboard letters, sink into me, refresh me, let your atoms become my atoms, and emerge transformed on the screen, shining in hitherto unknown combinations.


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[info]kijjohnson
2003-05-28 07:46 am UTC (link)
Black-belt martial artists are given a lovely black belt, but since they don't replace it as they continue to improve, their belt grows gray over the repeated washes of a lifetime, fading eventually to white. It becomes a white belt, the beginner's belt, and wise black belts think this is pretty wonderful.

This is the opposite, isn't it? The white keys are a badge of wisdom and practice. May they grow ever paler.

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[info]truepenny
2003-05-28 08:44 am UTC (link)
My Kinesis must have exceptionally tough-wearing ink. I've had it 10 years, written 67 undergrad papers (including two honors theses), 7 term papers my masters year, 10 term papers for my Ph.D. coursework, three-fourths of a dissertation, 4 novels, 20 short stories (counting only the ones that are finished and at least theoretically salable), 1 prose poem, countless emails and LJ posts ... (pardon me a moment while I hyperventilate), and the letters are still almost all there. I noticed just yesterday that the I and the E have lost fragments of themselves.

Your conceit (and Kij's addendum) is beautiful; I'm a little saddened that I can't share it.

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[info]polyfrog
2003-05-28 09:31 am UTC (link)
your finger oils are probably just exceptionally non caustic, or your touch extremely light. I notice as I type this that my fingertips tend to scrub across the faces of the keys as I type. That is, my finger doesn't just go down and then back up; it goes down and across the key as I press.

Perhaps you are more in tune with your PC than Jo?

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ahhhh. Kinesis
(Anonymous)
2003-05-29 01:35 pm UTC (link)
The Kinesis is a fine keyboard (I'm typing on my 8-year-old one now).

Its keys are molded from two colors of plastic. The characters go all the way through the key so the slow absorption of the letters that Jo so eloquently describes is more of a secret than with keyboards with topically-applied letters.

Jeff Youngstrom http://tomecat.com/madtimes/

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Re: ahhhh. Kinesis
[info]polyfrog
2003-05-29 01:40 pm UTC (link)
Now, see, I thought of that. But when was the last time I saw a double-injection molded keyboard? About 1993.
I should learn to trust my instincts.

What will happen to you, [info]truepenny is that as time goes on the letter color will seem to bleed out from the letter forms, spreading quickly over the whole face of the key, once it starts. But not for at least another 20 years.

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[info]damerell
2003-06-08 07:36 pm UTC (link)
It's the fingers, not the ink - I've got an IBM clicky too that's been in use for well over a decade, and it's just fine.

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[info]mizkit
2003-05-28 09:44 am UTC (link)
That's just *exactly* how I feel about my letters disappearing (ths is a comparatively new keyboard, and only the 'n' is going, so far). On the other hand, it drives anybody else who has to use my keyboard crazy, because nobody else touch-types and they can't hunt and peck for keys with no letters on them.

I have thought about getting a Klingon, or an Elvish, key set for the keyboard. But perhaps that would take the magic away!

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[info]papersky
2003-05-28 11:46 am UTC (link)
Of course, nobody else being able to use your keyboard is a security feature.

That's why my old one is called a stealth keyboard.

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[info]eub
2003-05-29 01:31 am UTC (link)
A friend of mine spraypainted his keyboard flat black. A little bit for stealth, but mostly for the aura of doom.

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[info]flit
2003-05-28 11:43 am UTC (link)
I love this idea, imagining the weight of the words changing as new letters are absorbed!

I have pugnacious fingernails, strong and fast-growing, and my venerable little Vaio has grooves etched into some of the keys. The 'e' and 's' keys actually have holes in the top.

Perhaps I'm going for machine interface.

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[info]wandra
2003-05-28 03:18 pm UTC (link)
Ah, lovely post! I needed cheering up :-)

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(Anonymous)
2003-05-31 08:31 am UTC (link)
After seven years, the only letter that's actually been obliterated is the N, but now that you mention it, I notice that during my long-fingernail period I seem to have gouged nail-marks into the keys as well (the N showing the worst symptoms). The funny thing is that, though I've noticed the disappearance of the N, I hadn't noticed the nail-marks before.

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[info]aynjel
2003-05-31 01:22 pm UTC (link)
The keyboard my laptop used to have (I'm apparently rough on keyboards) was missing the N key entirely. And the K was a bit iffy. And the L and the S and the A keys. The period key looked like it had given up on being a period and was dedicating itself to being solely a > key while the shift key on the right had nothing but the silly upward-pointing arrow. The spacebar was slippery smooth on the right side, and less smooth than that on the left (though still smoother than some of the keys I never use like F1).

I've had this new keyboard on my laptop for less than five months and already the N key is going (tribute to my chronic checking of mail when I should be doing anything but and want an excuse to continue stalling), and the other keys have already lost the textured newness, which is a relief because I found the texture to be unnerving.

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[info]mhw
2003-06-06 06:51 am UTC (link)
Key status:

Alphabetics: q w s d f j z x c v b all intact; e r y u p a g m eroded to a greater or lesser degree; t i o h k l n completely blank
Punctuation and symbols: @ , . eroded
Other keys: all intact and dusty except F1 (clear) and left-shift (blank); HOME key somewhat gunky for some reason; numeric pad 4 has a blob of candle wax on it

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