From the Archives - Typing Tutor Corporate Intrigue!

Introduction

Sometimes technical support really lets me down. And then, when I want to gripe about it, who wants to listen? This post, from my archives, recalls an email exchange with tech support that bled over into my personal life, when I forwarded the thread, with my commentary, to my brothers and my dad. I somehow really ruffled my dad’s feathers, and his peeved response to my email provoked a whole new level of my scorn.

(The original version of this post didn’t disclose that it was my dad I was responding to. I called him “P—” because he probably wouldn’t like being quoted here, and I couldn’t just get his permission because he was dead. I took some solace in knowing that his being dead would somewhat mitigate the consequences of anybody figuring out who he is. Er, was. But it’s been a few years now, and honestly I think my original discretion was perhaps unnecessary. Don’t worry, he won’t be rolling in his grave because he was cremated.)

Typing Tutor Corporate Intrigue – April, 2002

From: Albert, Dana P.
Sent: Monday, April 22, 2002 4:28 PM
To: support@ssi.com
Subject: Question about Typing Tutor

Hi,

I just bought Typing Tutor 9. I see from your website that version 12 is available, but I can’t find it for sale anywhere. I’m hoping v9 is good enough.

My question concerns your Conceptual Effects Typing Method (CETM) training scheme and the Dvorak keyboard layout. I bought your product, over competing ones, because I wanted to try the CETM method, and I’m learning the Dvorak layout, and your software purports to support both. The problem is, the Dvorak layout seems only to be supported by your standard tutorial mode, not the CETM mode. In other words, your software introduces the keys sequentially according to the QWERTY home row, even when I’m using the Dvorak configuration. Is there a way around this, perhaps a patch I could apply to the program? Do more recent versions of the software support this?

Thanks,
Dana

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From: support@ssi.com

Sent: Wednesday, April 24, 2002 2:46 PM
To: ‘Albert, Dana P.’
Subject: RE: Question about Typing Tutor

Actually, the latest edition does not support the Dvorak keyboard at all. Support for it has declined with the rise in carpel tunnel injuries from over use of the keyboard.

M— B—
S.S. Interactive

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From: Albert, Dana P.

Sent: Wednesday, April 24, 2002 5:16 PM
To: ‘support@ssi.—.com’
Subject: RE: Question about Typing Tutor

M—,

Are you saying that use of the Dvorak keyboard has been associated with carpal tunnel injuries? This seems counter-intuitive based on the purpose of the Dvorak layout. Is there any documentation to this effect? If there are risks associated with this layout I want to know about them!

Thanks,
Dana

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From: support@ssi.com
Sent: Monday, April 29, 2002 3:19 PM
To: ‘Albert, Dana P.’
Subject: RE: Question about Typing Tutor

No formal scientific studies have been done. Some say that it relieves symptoms but on the other hand, if the speed increases dramatically, you are back in the repetative [sic] motion issue.

M— B—
S.S. Interactive

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From: Albert, Dana P.

Sent: Monday, April 29, 2002 4:34 PM

To: Geoff Albert; Bryan Albert; Dad

Subject: FW: Question about Typing Tutor

Dudez,

Remember that Typing Tutor problem I was talking about, where the lessons weren’t tailored to the Dvorak keyboard as promised? I emailed tech support, and they basically blew me off. I’m not going to pursue the matter with the hapless support rep, M— B—, because to challenge her out-of-thin-air BS explanations, employing my relentless rhetorical style, would be cruel. But check out her emails (attached). Unbelievable. Just to blow off a little steam I’ll share my objections with you.

If no study has been done, on what basis did they drop Dvorak support? And I have to take issue with the idea that increased comfort doesn’t relieve repetitive stress disorder because the increased speed results in more typing. This is only true if there is an infinite amount of typing to do. But if I’m faster, isn’t it the case that I finish earlier and can spend more time at the water cooler resting my hands? (Never mind that my employer took away our water coolers, in addition to our coffeemakers, and are putting in a vending machine. Those are mere technicalities.)

The more I think about it, the more M—’s logic befuddles me. If speed is bad, because it increases the likelihood of repetitive stress disorder, why is SS Interactive producing software that helps you increase typing speed? If they really care about repetitive stress disorder, why not either get out of the business entirely, or teach a more ergonomic typing technique (e.g., Dvorak)? And while I’m at it, wouldn’t “repetitive stress disorder” be a great name for a rock band? (“Coming to the Palladium: Repetitive Stress Disorder, with special guest Hard Floor Tool!”)

Dana

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From: Dad

Sent: Monday, April 29, 2002 9:56 PM

To: Albert, Dana P.

Cc: Geoff; Bryan

Subject: fellows: Re: FW: Question about Typing Tutor

Dana,

The lady you are dealing with is merely covering for her managers. They have almost certainly decided, as one learns to do in management school, to eliminate any products whose monetary return is not dramatic. Ms B— might quickly lose her job if she backed down on the validity of the things she has said. Surely her email transactions are monitored sometimes or all the time. It is not worth costing her her livelihood to prove that you are right. It’s the managers who should be punished, but you have no safe means to do that, and it would not get you the desired software. Why continue?

Dad

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From: Albert, Dana P.

Sent: Tuesday, April 30, 2002 5:03 PM

To: Bryan; Geoff

Subject: FW: fellows: Re: FW: Question about Typing Tutor

[Dad omitted from this response]

Dudez,

“Why continue?” Why indeed! Naturally I will not rest until I have entrapped Ms B—, pawn that she is, in my remorseless game of corporate intrigue. Yes, I have set a trap—my e-mail messages are the bait, and she is my prey. I’m sure her evil employers have a zero-tolerance policy concerning failure to further the corporation’s diabolical deceptions. It is intuitively obvious that entire rooms full of lowly auditors pore over e-mail after e-mail looking for signs of dissent. Sure, I’d like to punish those managers, ensconced in their comfortable boardrooms, plotting their schemes to catch disloyal tech support people in the act of being bullied, by the likes of me, into betraying the evil business school secrets. But if I can’t catch the big fish, I’ll settle for ending the humble career of a mere clerk. Such is my insatiable lust for winning arguments, even if I’m arguing with unlearned, weary cogs of corporate America. If I can have the satisfaction of taking food right out of the mouths of Ms B—’s children, that’s enough for me. Here is my fantasy, which I run through in my head, night after night, in salacious detail: 

         Ms B— reads my retort, which lays bare the flaws in her statements about Dvorak and Typing Tutor 9. Realizing she is outsmarted, and can no longer continue her deception, she replies, “You’re right! I can’t deny it! It has nothing to do with carpal tunnel! It’s you—you’re not a preferred customer! You had it right all along! Please, please forget about Typing Tutor, forget this whole correspondence!” She clicks “Send” and then madly begins deleting the e-mail chain, message by message, from her PC, her face bright red. A colleague, a mere two feet away in a three-foot-wide cubicle identical to hers, sees her distress, guesses it’s corporate sabotage, and sends a quick message to her manager. In less than an hour the auditors have put together the incriminating trail of digital evidence, and Ms B— has been summoned and is standing in front of her boss, knees shaking.
         “Ms B—, was I not perfectly clear, in our staff meeting last October, what tech support personnel were to tell customers about our stance on Dvorak?”
         “You were,” she sobs.
         “This company cannot afford to support Dvorak users, and yet we cannot risk being sued for choosing not to support them. That is why you were to use carpal tunnel syndrome as an excuse for our product direction. Why have you betrayed our secret to a customer? Don’t try to deny doing it, I have the e-mail right here.”
         “I don’t know . . . I guess he bullied me into admitting it!”
         “Yes, it seems a very clever troublemaker with a big chip on his shoulder has it in for you. But damn it, you didn’t need to cave. I have your employment agreement right here. You have acknowledged, by your signature, that failure to align all of your customer-facing statements with our official corporate positions is grounds for immediate termination. Give me one good reason not to fire you.”
         “I’m the sole breadwinner for my family! My husband was arrested by the FBI for forwarding an article about PGP to a friend, so I’m raising the children all by myself!”
         “I’m afraid that’s not SSI’s problem. You have five minutes to clear out your desk. A security guard will escort you from the building. You’ll never work tech support again in this state, I can guarantee you that.” As the door closes behind her, she hears the beginning of a long peal of evil laughter.

Since when is Dad an expert on what “they” teach in “management school”? And where did he get his information about how closely companies monitor e-mail? Did this guy grow up in the Soviet Union or something?

And what’s this about “It’s the managers who should be punished, but you have no safe means to do that.” What does that even mean? Since when do managers get punished? And how would one do that safely?

Above all, how did Dad not grasp that my retort was hypothetical, and that I never intended to “continue”?

Sheesh,
Dana

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AI Smackdown - Moto vs. Cortana vs. Siri

NOTE:  This post is rated R for mild strong language.

Introduction

I already blogged about my Android phone—not the way a professional critic would, but in terms of what’s actually interesting about it, which to me is the Artificial Intelligence angle.  Actually, “artificial stupidity” was the point:  a phone playing dumb so it can play favorites.  I’ve also blogged a bit about AI in general, with Apple’s Siri agent as a case study, but that was before I had an iOS device.  Now, I own all three platforms:  Moto/Android; Siri; and Microsoft’s Cortana.  In this post I compare and contrast them: not because I’m going to help you choose, but to try to make you laugh.  And you might have something interesting to scratch your head about later.

(I’m not going to try to differentiate between the terms Google Now, Android, and Moto.  They all meld in my mind.  If somebody protests that there are massive differences, I won’t be offended if you go read his or her blog instead.)

Cortana

I’ll start with Cortana because it can be dispatched very quickly.  If you type something into the Cortana field in Windows 10, it does a Bing search.  Bing is a little bit like using a Curad bandage instead of a Band-Aid, or using Hunts ketchup instead of Heinz, or wearing Sears Toughskins jeans instead of Levi’s.  It just isn’t done.  I don’t actually care if Bing works just fine.  It’s Bing, which means it’s not Google. “Let me Bing that for you.”  Give me a break.

Moreover, before you can get into the voice recognition stuff, you have to deal with this frightening disclaimer:

Yes, I know all this meddlesome snooping is just to “tailor the experience,” but it’s the online equivalent of your tailor saying, “To get the fit right on these trousers, I’ll have to reach in and fondle your balls.”  The explicit information Windows wants to use is bad enough, but that wide-open phrase “and other information” is just over the top.

Besides, “Cortana” sounds like a new model of Hyundai.  You know what Microsoft?  It’s over.  You lost.  You’re just a PC software company.  Stop trying to act “mobile.”

Android/Moto

I won’t go into a lot of detail about how well my Android phone responds to voice commands, because a) I already did that, here; and b) as I describe the Siri experience, I’ll compare it to Android/Moto as I go.

The really lame thing about Siri

Imagine if, before engaging with a person, you had to go push a button on the person’s chest.  In most cases, this would be absurd.  (With my kids, who never hear my commands, it would actually be an improvement.)

I think it almost goes without saying that voice response is a minimum requirement for any kind of AI.  The Siri demo I watched way back in 2012 did feature voice activation on the iPhone.  But oddly enough, for the Siri voice response to work on the iPad, the iPad has to be plugged in to an electrical outlet.  That is just so bizarre!  I mean, the iPad’s portability is the whole point, isn’t it?  What’s next for Apple:  an iPhone you plug into an RJ-11 jack?  This is ridiculous.  If I’m sitting at a desk next to an electrical outlet, I might as well be using a laptop.

There’s something else really lame about the iPad:  a limitation that hasn’t existed on an Apple product since the Apple II computer.  But I’ll get into that later.  Better to keep you in suspense.

Siri voice response:  up to snuff?

In general, Siri tries to have a bit more personality than Moto.  For example, if I ask my Droid, “Do you love me?” it shows me a song called “Do you love me?” by the Contours.  (My younger daughter, who has not seen “Her,” put me up to asking this question.)  When I asked Siri if she loved me, she responded, “I respect you.”  And when (again at my daughter’s behest) I asked Siri, “Have you ever gone to the bathroom?” she replied, “Who, me?”

Is this cheekiness a good thing?  Well, Siri’s responses may strike you as funnier that Moto’s.  On the other hand, when I asked my Droid about using the bathroom, I got a list of hits pertaining to using the wrong restroom (i.e., the one intended for the opposite sex).  It was a very funny list, linking to some amusing sites.  (You may be wondering:  have I ever used the wrong restroom?  Well, yes, once, purely by accident.  I was in there doing my business and thinking, “What kind of public restroom doesn’t have urinals?”  When the answer suddenly came to me, I hightailed it right on out of there.)

Sometimes Siri’s personality gets in the way.  For example, I asked Siri, “What time is it?” and she responded, “At the third stroke, it will be 16:26.  Beep.  Beep. Beep.”  This was more confusing than amusing, and besides, it was inaccurate:  the actual time was like 4:25:30.  I would rather Siri have a more reliable connection to the NIST Internet time servers than a zingy response.

If your desk is as cluttered as mine, being able to summon your phone by voice is very handy.  When I call out my keyphrase for my Droid, it makes a pretty loud two-tone beep to let me know it’s listening.  The iPad beep is much quieter.  Neither device responds in any useful way to the question, “Where are you?”  Siri says, “Wherever you are, that’s where I am.”  This isn’t that funny, and for most people wouldn’t even be true.  (I bring my iPad, Droid, silverware, and all other valuables with me wherever I go, so don’t bother burglarizing my house.)

 This is where these devices are inconsistent.  Their programmers need to decide if the device should have a sense of self or not.  Siri speaks in the first person (e.g., “Who, me?” and “I respect you”), but when I say, “Hey Siri, how’s your battery doing?” she has no idea what “your” means.  She replies, “My apologies ... I couldn’t find those stocks.”  Pretty useless.

When I tell my Droid, “Find my phone,” it makes this cool sonar sound continuously until I find and silence it.  When I tell Siri “Find my iPad,” she tries to make me turn on Location Services.  Look, Siri, if I could do that, I’d know where you are, and I wouldn’t be asking.

I’ve often thought that one of the most useful features of voice response would be getting help configuring the device.  So I said, “Hey Siri, turn on your flash.”  She replied,  “Who, me?”  I decided some context might help, so within the camera app I said to turn on the flash.  Siri replied, “It doesn’t look like you have an app named ‘flash.’  If you’d like, I can help you look for it on the App Store.”  I just don’t think this is that difficult a concept.  You have a camera.  It has a flash.  Turn it on.

The Droid does respond to “Take a selfie.”  It ought to say, “I can’t,” because its camera is basically its face.  But its reaction, which is to launch the camera, put it in selfie mode, and set a self-timer, is actually fairly useful, at least for the hands-free breed of narcissist.  When I tell Siri “take a selfie,” she says, “You’ll need to unlock your iPad first.”  This isn’t very helpful, and in fact isn’t even true.  As my older daughter discovered, the iPad can be used as a camera even by somebody who lacks my fingerprint and passcode.  And when I follow Siri’s instructions and unlock the iPad, it does go into camera mode, but not selfie mode.  As regards this command, Siri is fairly incompetent.

Something that bothers me about my Droid’s AI is a certain lack of resourcefulness.  When I ask it, “How do I look?” I think it should activate the camera in selfie mode, to use as a mirror.  Or It could really wow me by saying, “Your hair is a mess.”  (When you consider modern digital camera technology, which can tell if a subject’s eyes are closed, this hairdo check actually seems quite doable.) 

I asked Siri, “How do I look?” and she really stumbled.  She kept hearing, “How do I luck,” which she should have automatically revised because it just doesn’t make any sense.  One time, she thought I asked, “How do I lurk?” and replied, “I found something on the web about ‘how do I lurk.’ Check it out.”  That’s really unfortunate.  I wonder what kind of banner ads and spam I’ll get now that the Internet thinks I’m a stalker.

Finally Siri heard me right and replied, “Judging by your voice, I’d say you must be fairly attractive.”  Clever, but also kind of patronizing.  I mean, it’s bad enough asking an inanimate object such a personal question, but to be damned with faint praise ... that’s pretty pathetic.  I think Siri should be generous and say, “I would so go to bed with you.”

At least Siri respects my privacy.  When I said, “Get me home,” she replied, “I don’t know your home address.  In fact, I don’t know anything about you.”  I found this really reassuring, especially after Cortana’s attempted shakedown earlier.  (Yes, Siri did ask me to go into settings and identify myself, but didn’t require it.)

I have to say, though, there’s something a bit creepy about Siri.  When I ask something complicated, such as a question regarding navigation, there’s this little blurry light that bounces back and forth along the bottom edge of the screen, which reminded me of something sinister.  After racking my brain for awhile I realized what:  the single roving eye of a Cylon from “Battlestar Galactica.”  Is Siri some kind of kindred spirit to the AI powering the Cylons?  If so, that doesn’t reflect well ... the Cylons were really pretty stupid.  They always went down like bowling pins.

Another creepy thing:  when I said, “Hey Siri, lock my iPad,” she replied, “I’d like to, but I cannot.  My apologies.”  This almost gave me chills.  It brought me right back to the HAL 9000 in “2001 – A Space Odyssey,” when Dave says, “Open the pod bay doors, HAL,” and HAL replies, “I’m sorry, Dave.  I’m afraid I can’t do that.”  Who is Siri’s master:  me, or Apple?

Feature parity with Moto?

If I were designing Siri, or working on an update package, I’d pay close attention to what the competition is doing.  I’d make sure, for example, that anything Moto could do, Siri could do better.  This evidently hasn’t occurred to Apple, because there are all kinds of commands Moto can handle that Siri cannot.  For example, if you ask Moto, “What’s up?” it will trawl through your appointments, e-mails, etc. and give you an update.  I asked Siri “What’s up?” and she said, “I’m thinking about pie.  Mmmmmm.” 

If you tell Moto, “Talk to me,” it will announce incoming calls and texts for the next 30 minutes.  This doesn’t occur to Siri, who responds, “I’d really prefer it if you talked to me.  Tell me your hopes, your dreams, where you’d like to make a dinner reservation.”  So I told Siri, “I hope my dinner is yummy tonight.”  She replied, “I don’t know what you mean by ‘I hope my dinner is yummy tonight.’  How about a web search for it?”  Not a very good listener, since she specifically asked me to tell her my hopes!  Just lip service.  I said, “I dream of being rich and famous one day,” and got the same “I don’t know what you mean” response.

I said, “Hey Siri, play Beethoven on YouTube.”  She replied, “You don’t seem to have an app named ‘YouTube.’ We could see if the App Store has it.”  Don’t play dumb with me, Siri!

I asked Siri to zap my screen (which is how Moto is told to take a screen snapshot).  Siri kept hearing “zapped my screen” (which resulted in a web search) and then eventually heard “zap ice cream,” and—bizarrely—pulled up a Dairy Queen in Beulah, North Dakota.  I’m not kidding.

Since screen snapshots are really useful to bloggers, I kept trying:  “Hey Siri, take a screen snapshot.”  To my great surprise, Siri didn’t play dumb, but simply refused:  “That’s beyond my abilities at the moment.”  Huh?  No way is this beyond her abilities.  I managed to learn (no thanks to Siri) how to get a snapshot (pressing two far-flung buttons at once).  So it can be done.  Why can’t Siri do it?  Is she a bit ... simple?

You may be wondering how I know so many cool Moto commands.  It’s because you can say, “Get a list of commands,” and Moto provides one.  I told Siri, “Get a list of commands” and though—as you can see—she did hear me right, she decided just to show me a map of the nearest Coast Guard station.  WTF!?

Is Siri the best at anything?

Okay, I’ve been pretty harsh on Siri here.  Is she better than Moto at anything?  Well, yes.  I think her navigation is better.  I just asked Moto, “Where is the nearest pizza place?” Moto replied, “Here are the listings for ‘nearest pizza place’ within zero point eight miles.”  The nearest place—Gioia Pizzeria—was listed first among non-paid entries, but at the top of the screen was an ad for Little Caesars $5 Pizza, which a) isn’t nearby, and b) isn’t even pizza.  (I don’t know what that stuff is, but it ain’t pizza.)  Meanwhile, if I were trying to get this answer without having to look at my phone—like, if I were driving—this written response would be useless.  (At least Moto did better than when I first blogged about this, when it lied and said Zachary’s Pizza was the closest.)

Here, Siri did better.  She replied, aloud, “The nearest one I found is Gioia in Berkeley, which averages 4½ stars and is inexpensive.  Would you like to try it?”  Presumably if I’d said yes, she’d have navigated there.  Instead I said, “Actually, Siri, it’s pretty expensive.”  To which she replied, “I’m sorry.”  Well played, Sir[i]!

It’s in the realm of a more specific request where Siri really shines.  I asked, “Where’s the nearest deep dish Chicago style pizza place?”  She showed me Zachary’s, which is correct.  I’m pretty impressed, especially since when I asked Moto the same question, it showed me Giordano’s and Lou Malnati’s, both of which are in Chicago.  As you can see, Moto clearly heard “nearest” correctly, but somehow missed my meaning.

The second really lame thing about iPads

Earlier I complained about how you have to plug in the iPad to get voice activation, and promised to reveal another huge shortcoming.  I doubt you’ll immediately grasp how lame this next one is, but here goes:  Apple iOS doesn’t support the Dvorak keyboard layout, which is  more efficient than QWERTY and has been supported by Apple since the Apple IIc.  According to Wikipedia, the IIc  “had a mechanical switch above the keyboard whereby the user could switch back and forth between the QWERTY layout and the Dvorak layout.... The IIc Dvorak layout was even mentioned in 1984 ads, which stated that the World’s Fastest Typist, Barbara Blackburn, had set a record on an Apple IIc with the Dvorak layout.”

                                                               

I haven’t been able to find anything on the Internet about why Apple decided not to support Dvorak on the iPad.  I guess the default answer for their product choices—“Because we’re gods, and we can do whatever we want!”—will have to do.  It’s so frustrating, since this has got to be really simple to do in software.  It would probably take some Apple developer about five minutes.

But why should you care, since you type on QWERTY anyway?  Well, consider the security ramifications of encouraging third party developers to create such fundamental utilities as keyboard software.  After installing Fleksy, a free Dvorak-enabled app, I messed about with the iPad a little, wandered off to do something more useful, and then realized, “Duh, I’ve just done something really stupid.”  What better way to steal somebody’s keystrokes than to create an app that quite obviously has access to everything I type?

At first I told myself this was no big deal.  After all, I’m mainly using the iPad to browse the web, and I don’t kid myself that my every move on the Internet isn’t already tracked, and not just by the NSA.  (By the way, keep up the good work, guys!  Thanks for keeping me safe!)

But of course, there’s the little matter of passwords.  I felt like I’d just given away the keys to the kingdom, or at least to the two websites I’d logged into (my bank and my e-mail).  I was all set to go change those two passwords, but first decided to see how hard it is to switch iPad keyboards on the fly, so going forward I could type passwords with the native Apple iOS keyboard.  Perhaps there would be a function key right on the soft Fleksy keyboard to simplify this switch?  And then I noticed this:

It might be hard to tell, but in the first snapshot above, the cursor is in the Username field.  In the second snapshot, the cursor is in the Password field.  The same flag that tells the OS to obscure the password (i.e., showing ******* instead of what’s typed) tells the iPad to switch to the standard Apple iOS keyboard.  So those passwords I typed before? I’d typed them on the standard QWERTY  keyboard without even realizing it.  Those passwords weren’t at risk of being intercepted by the Fleksy keyboard app after all.  That’s pretty clever of Apple, isn’t it?

Of course, when your cleverness only serves the mitigate the downside of your pointless shortcoming, it’s actually a lot less impressive.  Hey Apple, why not support the Dvorak layout to begin with, like you did with the Apple IIe, the Apple III, the Macintosh, the Quadra, the PowerBook, the Performa, the iMac, the iBook, and the MacBook?

At the time of this writing, Apple is sitting on over $200 billion in cash.  Couldn’t they spend a few bucks to match the features of their own earlier products?  Hell, they could probably get an unpaid intern to do it.  I, for one, am not feeling the love ... even if Siri does claim to respect me.

Other albertnet posts on A.I. 

• I, Chatbot
• Almost Intelligent – Part I
• Almost Intelligent – Part II
• Smartphones & Artificial Stupidity
• Could Artificial Intelligence Replace Writers? – Part 1
• Could Artificial Intelligence Replace Writers? – Part 2
• Could Artificial Intelligence Replace Writers? – Part 3
• A.I. Smackdown – English Major vs. ChatGPT – Part 1
• A.I. Smackdown – English Major vs. ChatGPT – Part 2
• Schooling ChatGPT
• Will A.I. Steal Our Jobs?
• Tech Check-In - How Good is the Latest A.I.? - Part I
• Tech Check-In - How Good is the Latest A.I.? - Part II
• What is ChatGPT Great At (and Not)?
• Tech Reflection – Two Sides of AI
• AI Smackdown – ChatGPT vs. Copilot vs. Gemini
• More AI Smackdown - ChatGPT, Copilot, & Gemini Write Poetry

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Email me here. For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Down With Convenience!

Introduction

“I appreciate the seamless ease….”

That statement is the inspiration for this post.  It’s from a letter a friend wrote me recently.  The point isn’t that he sounds like a TV ad (from the days when ad spokesmen were earnest instead of arch). The point, rather, is that I found this simple statement oddly inflammatory.  I asked myself why.  And the answer is, I should find it inflammatory, and so should you.  Ideally, all my friends would join me in mounting a War on Convenience.  If I can’t have that, well, maybe I can influence a few readers.

A paradox

Of course I was being bombastic and hyperbolic a second ago.  Who doesn’t want convenience in his life?  But I think convenience is like alcohol:  it should be enjoyed responsibly.

Paradoxically, my worldview straddles two seemingly conflicting ideals:  I’m a great lover of efficiency, but I bristle at society’s infatuation with ease and expedience.  “Wait,” you may ask, “aren’t efficiency and convenience pretty much the same thing?”

Nope.  When I say “efficient” I mean that I can get something done exactly how I want it done in as little time as possible.  (Often this involves doing a lot of work up front, like creating macros for a software application.)  When people talk about seamless ease, they’re often referring to systems that are merely intuitive, such as a user interface that can be grasped quickly, without any need for help menus or a manual.  Some products are convenient because they remove tedious steps; other products are convenient because they rescue you from having to learn something.

I think it’s widely assumed that where user interfaces go, intuitive is best.  But this isn’t always true.  Consider the computer keyboard:  to be maximally intuitive, its keys ought to be placed in alphabetical order.  That would make it easier for the first-time user, wouldn’t it?  But of course this idea seems silly, since typing efficiency is more important than making the keyboard layout straightforward for the newcomer.

What’s even sillier is that the QWERTY layout was actually designed to be maximally inefficient, to keep early typewriters from jamming.  The Dvorak layout I use was difficult to learn, but my long-term gains in efficiency were well worth the trouble.

Low-lying fruit

The simplest argument against the embrace of convenience is that it often requires us to forsake quality.  I give you microwave popcorn:  it’s certainly easy to make, but a) it literally stinks, b) it’s more expensive than traditional popcorn, c) it tastes pretty bad, d) it’s full of salt and fat, e) it’s full of chemicals, and f) the excessive packaging is bad for the environment.  The popularity of microwave popcorn makes me embarrassed to be a member of the human race, considering that an air popper is also extremely easy to use, and cheaper, and lets you control how much salt and butter you add.

Whipped cream in an aerosol can is also really convenient, but it’s more expensive and less tasty than what you whip at home, and has the added problem of unpredictability:  it’s hard to tell when the can is low on cream (or non-dairy “kreme” as it often is), so you never know when you’ll foul up your sundae with the liquid dribble that comes at the end.  By whipping my own cream, I can choose an organic product; whip only as much as I need; control the amount of sugar; and save money.

But enough of these convenient examples.  I want to get into the more subtle ways that, through our love of convenience, we sell ourselves short without even realizing it.

The problem of control

Often, complicated systems are made more intuitive, and sometimes more efficient, through a simplification of the user interface and/or automation of repetitive operations.  A little Cessna surely has a simpler interface than a commercial airliner, though it often lacks that handy autopilot feature.

Automation is a fine idea in theory, but in practice, it’s only as good as its execution.  How accurate are product developers’ guesses about what should be automated and how?

Well, here’s a horror story.  My family was visiting some friends in their lovely, sunny home in London.  One afternoon, when our friends were out, I thought, hey, my mother-in-law is always asking for a nice photo of my wife and me.  And here we had this great lighting, so I suggested to my wife that we finally take the time to shoot a nice photo together.  My wife has a tendency to close her eyes in photos, so it took us at least a dozen tries.  Well, on the last day of our visit, our host said, “Hey, why not give us some photos of your visit from your SD card?”  Great idea!  So I took the card up to their Mac and stuck it in the card reader, expecting that I could cherry-pick the best photos of both families.  But to my surprise the operating system seized control, copied every photo off the card, and launched a little slide show, set to music.  This might have seemed really helpful to a novice computer user who hadn’t mastered file management software, but I was appalled.  The software must have chosen to show the pictures in reverse chronological order, because the first two dozen shots were of my wife and me.  We came off looking like the biggest narcissists you’ve ever seen.

Probably there’s a way to tell the Mac not to automatically grab all the photos from an SD card.  But some systems don’t give us a choice.  We consumers often put up with this lack of control because we enjoy the convenience of the overall product.  I see this problem most frequently in Internet-based systems, particularly when the revenue model is more complicated than “you pay me directly for goods or services.”  Things are automated with more than just the user’s experience in mind.

Here’s an example:  the Gmail Adsense engine, which automatically produces custom ads based on my e-mail text, doesn’t exist to serve me.  Were I given the choice to opt out of Adsense, I certainly would.  I don’t even use Gmail, and yet (as detailed here) my e-mails to Gmail users nevertheless produce these tailored ads I like it or not.

But you know what’s even worse than that?  It’s when we’re unaware of how convenience is costing us.  Consider LinkedIn:  it’s very convenient, and a great idea, and I’m glad that it’s free.  But as I’ve only recently discovered, LinkedIn does what it pleases with the information I give it.  Awhile back, because my profile photo was like five years old, I put up a new one.  (The idea was anti-vanity:  I didn’t want people to think I was using an old photo just to look younger to the world.)  To my embarrassment, LinkedIn contacted my 400 contacts on my behalf:  “Dana Albert has a new profile picture!”  As in, “Dana Albert, devoted curator of his own image and his self-important notion of an Albert ‘brand,’ wants you to see his latest self-portrait!”  A few people responded, perhaps snidely, “Nice picture!”  How embarrassing.  (Yes, I am easily embarrassed.  What can I say … I’m an introvert.)

But that’s not all.  I’ve come to find out that LinkedIn evidently does something special for their newer users:  they send an update anytime one of the user’s contacts has made new connections.  Since I don’t get such updates, I’d never have known about this behavior, except a couple of friends commented.  (“Wow, I’ve see a lot of LinkedIn updates on you lately … did you lose your job or something?”)  Once I looked into it, I figured out how to change these settings, but it wasn’t easy—which means that those who thrive on convenience will probably just accept the default behavior.  (Surely I don’t need to go into the various ways Facebook has surreptitiously exploited their users’ tastes, preferences, and purchasing data.)

Are your choices my business?

“Fine,” you might say, “Go whip your own cream, and type on your weird keyboard, and shun Facebook, if that’s what floats your boat—but let me do as I please.”  In other words, you might wonder why your behavior is any business of mine.  Here’s why:  other people’s behavior often affects what choices are available to me.

Here’s how that happens.  Because I worship efficiency, I enjoy figuring out how to make a complicated process go quickly—but not everybody enjoys this process, and manufacturers know it.  New products are often targeted at teens and young adults (to build brand loyalty early), so new consumers’ habits can have an immediate influence on industry.  Streamlining a process, modern consumers believe, should be figured out by the manufacturer and baked into the product.  Thus, the focus is outward on the product, rather than inward on the user.  It’s not “How can I get better at this” but “How can this be better for me?”  The “smarter” our products get, the lazier we’re permitted to be.

(Fortunately, schools are still essentially old-school.  If it weren’t for teachers making kids learn math, do you think these kids would bother, given the ease-of-use of smartphone calculator apps?  And yet, once you’ve learned arithmetic, it’s faster to do it in your head.)

The result of this consumer/producer dynamic is that perfectly valid products are often kicked to the curb.  Consider the manual car transmission, aka stick shift:  is it straightforward?  Not very.  Is there a benefit to learning how to work a clutch?  I think so.  After all, a manual transmission offers better gas mileage, and enables me to roll-start the car if my battery is dead.  My mastery of manual shifting impresses the ladies, and enables me to rent a car in Europe.  The popularity, in this country, of automatic transmissions didn’t used to affect me, until that choice became so ubiquitous that some foreign car companies stopped exporting their stick-shift models here.  When I bought my last Volvo, I couldn’t get one with the transmission I wanted.  I had to settle for an automatic. 

(By the way, that bit about impressing the ladies?  Yeah, that was a joke.  Just seeing if you’re awake.)

Another example:  digital cameras.  What a great invention, and yet the camera industry is really suffering.  You know what the number one camera is today?  The iPhone.  It’s easy to see why:  you’re carrying your phone anyway, so why carry another device?  The problem is, phone cameras are not nearly as good as regular digital cameras—even the more humble point-and-shoot ones.  A phone camera takes inferior pictures because the lens is too small and doesn’t let in enough light for non-flash photography in low-light conditions.  Phone cameras also lack a zoom (their so-called “digital zoom” is pure malarkey—cropping masquerading as telephoto).

Look at these two photos.  The first was taken with a $200 Panasonic Lumix point-and-shoot camera.  The second was with a Motorola Droid phone of the same vintage. 

The point-and-shoot photo is much better, and not because I got out a light meter, set the F-stop, adjusted the shutter speed, etc.  It was as easy to snap as with the phone (easier, actually, because there’s way less delay at the controls).  The only convenience I gave up was having everything in one device.

If the camera industry were healthier, I’d have even better products available to me, and at lower prices (due to economies of scale).  Alas, the market for standalone cameras has been strangled by the ubiquity of camera phones—the more convenient choice.

Whom does convenience benefit the most?

Sometimes the person who seems like the most direct beneficiary of convenience-oriented technologies actually isn’t.  Consider the grocery store UPC reader:  it’s very intuitive, and thus perfect for bringing new cashiers up to speed quickly.  It’s also more efficient, but this benefit does not accrue to the cashier, who is paid by the hour.  The system’s efficiency doesn’t mean the cashier gets a raise; it means he or she is easier to replace, and the store can get by with fewer checkout stations.

Now let’s move beyond human consumers and consider other consumers, like cattle.  Being kept in a small stall in a feedlot is certainly convenient for the cow, in terms of her basic need for sustenance.  Of course this diet causes all kinds of trouble for the poor animal, but her well-being was never the point.  The convenience of the feedlot mainly benefits the meat packer.  Since this arrangement translates into lowered operating costs, which can be passed along to the human consumer, it looks like a win-win.  So it is with cheap, high-margin products like soft drinks and sugary cereal.  Needless to say, in the long term this convenience isn’t benefiting the human consumers, either.  The countless Americans who buy junk food and frequent fast food chains are basically backing in to their own feedlot stalls.

Meanwhile, pharmaceutical companies grasp that there’s big money to be made in drugs that treat lifestyle ailments, and doctors prescribe these drugs because doing so is so much easier than trying to get people to exercise and eat well.  Consumers participate in this lowest-price, lowest-effort economic model without an appreciation for its real costs.  The companies at the top in this economy are the direct beneficiaries of our rampant convenience addiction; by indulging it, they introduce a variety of societal ills.  In this regard, convenience is like secondhand smoke.

Convenience and parenting

If you’re a parent who has made it this far into my essay, I doubt you’re the kind who feeds his kid soft drinks, sugary cereal, and fast food.  But addiction to convenience is also present in the most upscale of products.  I’m talking about PCs, smartphones, tablet computers, and Netflix.

It’s more convenient to park kids in front of the TV or PC than to try to get them to help with dinner or with setting the table.  It’s easier to let a kid use his iPad in a restaurant, while his food gets cold, than to teach him how to behave like a grown-up.  So kids and their parents become co-dependents in a family dynamic that ultimately favors no one.

I won’t lie and say I never give in to such temptations.  But when I do, I don’t pretend I’m being a good dad.  “Shall we sit our kids down in front of a video and let them rot their brains out, just to get them out of our hair?” I’ll ask my wife.  And I’ll say to my kids, “Would you like to put in a video and let your brain be automatically extracted?”  This raises awareness and may help us fend off bad habits.

Do modern kids have the mental space required to daydream?  I’d guess a lot of them don’t.  So when my kids complain that they’re bored, I say, “Good.  It’s good to be bored.”  Necessity being the mother of invention, boredom is a good problem for the mind to solve.  Solving this problem with a library book, a blank piece of paper, or some random household detritus doesn’t do much for the economy, but the economy is not my problem.

“But wait,” you may protest, “Computers can be very educational!”  Yes, they can, but that doesn’t mean just any computer-based activity is intrinsically useful.  Too many parents pretend their Internet-addicted kid might become the next Mark Zuckerberg—because this fiction is more convenient than fighting with the kid about limits on his or her screen time.

My wife and I are all about limits.  This is why we don’t have cable, our kids don’t have phones or tablets, and their PC time is closely monitored and rationed.

“Okay, fine,” you might say, “You’ve identified some troublesome trends, but how are the habits of other families any of your business?”  Well, where the hell are my daughters going to find husbands?  My kids won’t settle for a passive, inert, pasty, video-addled mouth-breather who doesn’t read.  Meanwhile, the boys out there won’t settle for out-of-touch, pop-culturally illiterate nerds who don’t even text.  Sure, there are some boys out there whose parents are just as socially unconventional as my wife and me, but it’s a small pool.

Call to action

If you disagree with all of this, that’s fine—and I thank you for at least reading it.

On the other hand, if you agree with me, you may wonder what I propose to do about this rampant convenience addiction.  The answer is simple (though not easy).  Next time you appreciate the convenience of something, ask yourself if that convenience came at any great cost to you:  to your privacy, to your health, to your family, or to the environment.  Then ask yourself if it’s worth it.  I’ll keep on doing the same.

And at a minimum, if you find yourself using the phrase “seamless ease,” please don’t say it like it’s a good thing.

The Case Against Margolis & Liebowitz

The Defendants

I type a lot. In 2002, plagued by hand and wrist pain and fearful of developing a repetitive stress injury, I decided to switch to the Dvorak keyboard layout. Dvorak is an alternative to the traditional QWERTY keyboard. It is named after its creator, August Dvorak, who designed it for maximum efficiency. The QWERTY layout, meanwhile, had originally been designed to keep early typewriter keys from jamming. Unlearning QWERTY and learning Dvorak was very difficult (I’d tried to convert years before and had failed), but since I successfully made the switch I’ve never suffered hand and wrist pain again.

Naturally, I’d like to encourage others to adopt this layout, and I take up that challenge in another blog post. I know from experience that Dvorak is more efficient than QWERTY, and that its benefits justify its learning curve, but I don’t expect to be taken as much of an authority. So, I did a little web research looking for studies of its efficiency. In doing so, I kept coming across an aggressively negative article about Dvorak by a pair of economists.

Right away I was nonplussed: what were economists doing studying typing efficiency in the first place? The answer is, these two take an interest in Dvorak because it is the poster child for an economic theory they refer to as “lock-in,” which is the (alleged) ability of inferior products to command inappropriate market share. The “lock-in” debate concerns the extent to which factors other than a product’s performance, such as an early foothold in the market or strong-arm market practices, can largely shape the competitive landscape.

Other classic examples of this economic theory are gradually losing their punch. For example, the Apple vs. Microsoft case study has become less relevant, as the obvious inferiority of MS-DOS to the Mac OS has given way to the arguable similarity of features between Mac and Windows. Or take the case of Betamax vs. VHS: once the source of lively debate, both video formats have become historical footnotes given the rise of the DVD. In contrast, the durable near-ubiquity of the QWERTY layout remains, justifiably, the perfect example of how performance and inefficiency can continue to take a backseat to sheer societal inertia.

The evil of two lessers

For philosophical, intellectual, and political reasons, Liebowitz and Margolis don’t like to accept that lock-in is a legitimate economic theory. I suppose they prefer to believe that the free market can solve all problems; in any case, it is essential to their position that Dvorak be discredited. So, despite the fact that they dwell in the abstract realm of economic theory instead of the literally hands-on physical realm of human/machine interfaces, they position themselves as authorities and assail the Dvorak layout with gusto in their article “The Fable of the Keys” in the Journal of Law & Economics, and (in shortened form) in their article “Typing Errors” in the June 1996 edition of Reason magazine.

“Typing Errors” article is pretty well written. It’s glib and polished, and the uncritical lay reader can be forgiven for being swayed by it. Even the normally unflappable Cecil Adams of The Straight Dope, after initially decrying the inefficiency of QWERTY, was taken in by “The Fable of the Keys”, falling on his sword and disavowing the entire content of his original article.

On closer inspection, however, Margolis and Liebowitz’s paper turns out to be poorly researched, and its arguments weakly constructed. The article has two fundamental problems. For one thing, the authors’ critique is targeted mainly at existing efficiency studies of the keyboard, rather than at the keyboard itself. Bad studies don’t mean a bad keyboard! Meanwhile, their article is far too focused on the feasibility of retraining QWERTY typists on Dvorak, not the ongoing benefits of the Dvorak layout once it’s been learned. The difficulty of retraining is beside the point: we don't need today's typists to unlearn QWERTY and learn Dvorak—we need tomorrow's typists to learn Dvorak to begin with.

A brief examination of these two fundamental flaws ought to be enough to thoroughly discredit the Margolis/Liebowitz thesis. But I won’t stop there. Because these hotshot economists have published a crappy article in a highly regarded journal, and because their quest to make an arcane point about economics has added to the inertia that prevents widespread adoption of a useful innovation, I aim to systematically dismember their argument to expose the full range of its flaws. Yes, your unsung blogger will take on the fancy eggheads using nothing more than logic and first-hand experience.

Red Herrings

The Margolis/Liebowitz argument begins with a section called “Tainted evidence for Dvorak.” They argue that Dvorak’s own study wasn’t subject to sufficient controls; they describe, for example, how Dvorak “compared students of different ages and abilities (for example, students learning Dvorak in grades 7 and 8 at the University of Chicago Lab School were compared with students learning QWERTY in conventional high schools).” After dispatching the large body of August Dvorak’s work in a few paragraphs, they proceed to a Navy study about the Dvorak layout. They find flaws with the Navy study as well: for example, “The participants’ IQs and dexterity skills are not reported for the QWERTY retraining group.” They cite differences in the study’s methods of measuring performance between the two layouts. They point out that August Dvorak, a Navy man, was the top expert in the Navy study. Margolis and Liebowitz present this last bit like it’s some sort of a conspiracy, and decry the fact of August Dvorak’s financial stake in the design.

Most of these grievances seem pretty nit-picky to me. The quality of the schools in the study wouldn’t seem to be a big deal, since plenty of people learn to type using simple software. (I learned Dvorak using a very basic website.) The lack of IQ benchmark strikes me as laughable; after all, Stephen Hawking, one of the foremost minds of our time, can’t type for beans. (Note to Margolis and Liebowitz: if you’re reading this, which I truly hope you are, please don’t build your rebuttal around that statement—it was a joke.) The financial interest Dvorak had is a bit more troubling, but don’t companies routinely fund their own performance studies? This is called marketing. (“Your mileage may vary.”)

But fine, let’s give these two the benefit of the doubt. Let’s assume that both the Dvorak study and the Navy study were complete frauds, conducted by deranged, dog-kicking sociopaths whacked out on coke and smack. Does that mean the Dvorak design isn’t more efficient? Of course not. Osama bin Laden could publish a pack of lies about the Dvorak design tomorrow, and it’s not going to make me type any slower.

Narrow interpretation

The next section of the Margolis/Liebowitz article is called “Evidence Against Dvorak,” and focuses on a government General Services Administration study. Margolis and Liebowitz describe the study as “a carefully controlled experiment designed to examine the costs and benefits of switching to Dvorak.” The ten subjects of the study took “well over 25 days” (whatever that means) to catch up to their old QWERTY speeds, after which their progress slowed. Meanwhile, a control group of QWERTY typists showed greater ongoing gains in speed than the Dvorak group. Based on these results, the director of the study concluded that “Dvorak training would never be able to amortize its costs.”

Is this really evidence against Dvorak? Note that the goal of the study wasn’t to assess the actual efficiency of Dvorak compared to QWERTY, but rather the merit of retraining QWERTY typists at government expense. The conclusions of the study itself, meanwhile, beg a lot of questions:

• Is twenty-five days really an unreasonable amount of time to unlearn an automatic, unconscious skill and learn a new one? In other words, is it not possible that the study was ended too soon? (My own speed continued to increase for years after I learned Dvorak.)
• Is speed the only measure of the validity of a keyboard design? Did anybody bother to ask the participants which keyboard was easier on their hands and wrists? Were the long-term costs of repetitive stress injuries even considered?
• Is ten typists a large enough sample?

Margolis and Liebowitz go on to narrowly interpret the results of other studies. They cite a 1973 study of six typists that found that after 104 hours of Dvorak training, typists saw a 2.6% increase in speed. I take this as evidence for, not against, Dvorak given that, by my own rough calculations, I will spend around 45,000 more hours typing by the age of seventy. A mere 104 hours of training, after which my hands and wrists stop hurting, seems like a good investment to me. This 1973 study is only “evidence against Dvorak” because Margolis and Liebowitz label it as such.

Meanwhile, a fundamental difference between Dvorak’s own study and these others is that Dvorak assessed the ease with which children learn the Dvorak layout, and the children's ultimate results thereafter. He was looking to a future generation unhindered by the need to unlearn an obsolete keyboard layout. The “Typing Errors” authors don’t seem to appreciate this difference in approach, framing the debate only in terms of the difficulty of retraining.

More red herrings

From here, the Margolis and Liebowitz spend one brief paragraph referring in the most general terms to other works denying the validity of Dvorak. They cite “other studies” without naming them, and conclude “The consistent finding in ergonomic studies is that the results imply no clear advantage for Dvorak.” What ergonomic studies? Whose findings?

I wouldn’t dwell on this vagueness so much if Margolis and Liebowitz didn’t then proceed to blather on for eight long paragraphs, in their section titled “QWERTY’s competition,” about competing early typewriters that lost out to QWERTY in speed tests back in the 19th century, decades before the Dvorak layout came into existence. Margolis and Liebowitz conveniently neglect to mention that the only record that matters—the current speed record—was set on a Dvorak keyboard, with a words-per-minute rate of 212, significantly faster than anything anybody has done on a QWERTY. (See for yourself: http://www.answers.com/topic/typing; search within the page on the text “Blackburn.”) I find it absurd that these two economists see fit to so smugly discredit the validity of early Dvorak studies when their own research ignores any typing records set after the year 1889.

Hubris

The economists, apparently drunk on their own bathwater, go on to boast that “we published a more detailed version of this material in a Journal of Law and Economics article titled ‘The Fable of the Keys.’ This journal is well known and has published some of the most influential articles in economics. In the six years since we published that article there has been no attempt to refute any of our factual claims, to discredit the GSA study, or to resurrect the Navy study.”

These guys shouldn’t confuse widespread apathy on the part of their readers with tacit agreement. The fact is, their readership is almost entirely comprised of entrenched QWERTY users who aren't in a position to judge Dvorak for themselves. If Margolis and Liebowitz wrote an equally poor paper about, say, childbirth not actually being that painful, you can bet they’d meet with plenty of dissent. (Meanwhile, a month after Margolis and Liebowitz made this boast, Reason magazine—the publisher of “Typing Errors”—received, and printed, a scathing rebuttal to the original article.)

Speaking of dissenting opinions, where are the successful Dvorak converts in “Typing Errors”? Did Margolis and Liebowitz’s research not manage to find any? It’s actually not hard to do. I checked out an opinion piece in the New York Times and found fifteen comments (not counting my own) posted by happy Dvorak converts. Okay, not a huge number of people, but it’s just one website; besides, the GSA study—Margolis and Liebowitz’s centerpiece—had even fewer. And any one of us Dvorak converts has a legitimate real-world perspective on the merit of the Dvorak design, which strikes me as a lot more valid than an argument based solely on the available literature of others. (Would Margolis and Liebowitz refute the benefit of the two-button computer mouse just because reams of scientific performance data aren’t available to substantiate its utility?)

Conclusion

“Typing Errors” assumes that the merit of a product design can be creditably evaluated solely on the basis of existing literature. Its authors ignore obvious questions, such as how a layout like QWERTY, designed decades before the advent of touch-typing, could possibly be as efficient as one designed with touch-typing in mind. They apparently fail to notice the obvious failings of QWERTY, such as the scattering of indispensable vowels across the board with the lowly semicolon getting a prime spot on the home row. They’re looking at decades-old studies instead of at the keyboard they’re typing on.

This article should serve as a cautionary tale about the perils of making up your mind in advance of your research, and tailoring your interpretation to suit your thesis. It’s a real pity that the quest of a couple of academics to make an arcane point about economics has managed to mislead the public about something more important. Economic theory aside, Margolis and Liebowitz are hindering the adoption of a technology that can offer tangible benefits.