A training within the technology that is lost of

Being a journalist, we start many interviews by supporting my pen and asking, “Have you ever seen one among these?” No one ever has.

It is maybe not a typical pen, needless to say. It’s a Sky wifi smartpen, a bit of gee-whiz technology from the ongoing business called Livescribe. Essentially, the replaces that are smartpen your standard reporter’s tools. The way I always have to start with, it’s an old-fashioned pen for old-fashioned paper, so I can still scribble my notes. The smartpen can be a top-notch recorder that is digital producing an sound file for the interview once we get along. Finally, a small digital camera near the end associated with the pen simultaneously takes images of my notes when I compose.

All that given info is then taken together by a microprocessor housed into the barrel of this pen. And as the smartpen is actually some type of computer, it is in a position to sync the picture up of my handwritten records utilizing the sound file. Which means i will touch the end for the pen any place in my notebook, as well as the pen will replay the audio instantly of whatever was being stated once I took that note. And as it’s WiFi enabled, the interview that is whole file, records, and all—is immediately uploaded to my Evernote account. It’s a small as promised.

There’s an added function i love to explain. It’s possible, We tell individuals, to have character that is optical developmental psychology research topics pc pc pc software to choose the pen. In the event that you compose like a standard individual, the OCR will automatically transform your handwritten records as a text file as you are able to then duplicate and paste into the term processor. For a lot of reporters, here is the most useful function, obviating the painful task of transcribing long interviews. Nonetheless it does not work for me, we explain, because even though I’m recording this meeting using the latest model Sky wifi smartpen, I’m using notes utilizing a nineteenth Century technology called Gregg shorthand.

In a lot of respects, Gregg is also more innovative compared to the smartpen. And, although no electronic devices or gizmos were included, it absolutely was a tremendously powerful and influential technology for nearly a century. Now, it is end up being the key to my workflow on the web age.

Gregg is really means of compressing language. You may be the device that does the decoding and encoding. As well as your mind can perform it in real-time at extremely, extremely high rates. To know why, you must know only a little on how it really works.

Gregg is simply a easier and much more efficient composing system than longhand English. This begins because of the letters by themselves. The Roman alphabet, which we use to compose English, is a lot more complicated than is strictly essential to differentiate one page from another. To print a“b” that is lower-case for instance, calls for an extended, downward swing with a clockwise loop during the base. Then, you need to choose your pen to go to another page, an extraneous action that occupies very nearly the maximum amount of time while the writing it self. Cursive (whenever had been the final time you heard that word?) might seem just a little faster, nonetheless it really calls for extra shots, brief ligatures in the beginning plus the end of each and every page. That’s a complete large amount of wasted movement, and that’s why cursive is clearly just about ten percent faster than printing.

In comparison, Gregg’s “letters” are much easier shapes. Listed here is the paragraph that is first of article written in shorthand:

Consonants are either shallow curves or right lines; vowels are generally loops or tiny hooks. The Gregg “b”, as an example, is a simple downward swing for the pen—a very very long, forward-leaning curve that faces off to the right, as an available parenthesis in italics. The Gregg “b” requires just one stroke compared to the four or five that comprise the Roman “b.” Gregg letters also require no ligatures; each letter blends seamlessly into the others if you measure the complexity of writing in the number of strokes. When you look at the combination “b-r”, for example, the long, downward bend of a “b” joins the brief, horizontal curve of a “r” to create a type of right-handed fishhook.

Here, you can observe the Gregg page “b,” then “r,” and a mix of the 2, which will represent “bring” ( more about that abbreviation in moment):

In Gregg, the simplification associated with kinds of letters reaches its apogee in a procedure called “blending”. The patient shots of several often combined page pairs are written with just one blended swing. The quick, right, horizontal dash of an “n” and also the long, diagonal, upward swing of the “d” join in order to become a long, upward bend that represents “nd”. This not just decreases the amount of shots, it eliminates the momentary pause necessary to create an angle amongst the “n” plus the “d”. This convenience of design—the absence of superfluous strokes—accounts for approximately ten percent associated with rate of Gregg.

Right right Here’s “n,” “d,” then the “nd” combination:

An additional benefit of Gregg is the fact that it’s phonetic. The term “bay”, for instance, is created “b-a”—the easy downward bend for the “b”, completed with all the big, counter-clockwise cycle of a “a”, so the word that is whole three letters in longhand, appears more or less like just one sloping form of the Roman “b”. Gregg eschews the parade of quiet letters, just like the “y” in “bay” which make English so very hard to learn as a 2nd language.