Every star has his Achilles Heel

The best lacrosse player in college has one weakness ... he's still building skills creating and presenting the drab PowerPoints so useful in dulling down corporate America. (Unless this was tongue in cheek), Rob Pannell tweeted:

RP3 ?@RobPannell3 25 Apr
Kid totally bested me in class by using laser pointer function of PowerPoint remote in presentation after me, it can do that? #athleteprobs

Rob, your shot still arrives on net faster than the other kid can flick the pointer button. PS Check out Prezi, this year's non-Powerpoint. Way gentler on the viewers.

billhoward
PS Check out Prezi, this year's non-Powerpoint. Way gentler on the viewers.

I'd never heard of Prezi but if somebody at TED hates it then it's worth looking at.

Prezi is a single slide. You add overlays (so it looks like many slides) which forces you to probably use fewer slides. The font looks like good hand-printing. It probably has 2-3 years before the mainstream decides it's a cliche, too.

Yeah, but the mainstream likes cliche. PP has been doddering along for 20 years with its look.

Trotsky
Yeah, but the mainstream likes cliche. PP has been doddering along for 20 years with its look.

Thanks a lot for doing the math on that. . I really didn't need that reminder.

So is my nephew, a 6th grader, going to be asking me about this new fangled "prezi" thing for his school projects? (Since I am the "professional student", his parents have decreed that I can be the one to help him with his projects)

Schools have a lot invested in teaching kids Office including how to make dull slides in PowerPoint so they can grow to fit right in with teachers, or military, or corporate types. Prezi is more casual so kids might like that, and the font looks like handwriting so maybe they'll like that. But I dont' see schools teaching two presentation programs.

billhoward
Prezi is more casual so kids might like that, and the font looks like handwriting so maybe they'll like that.

Kids probably aren't even aware of handwriting anymore.

Rita

Trotsky
Yeah, but the mainstream likes cliche. PP has been doddering along for 20 years with its look.

Thanks a lot for doing the math on that. . I really didn't need that reminder.

Oh just wait. I saw an Assembler H reference today. That's so old it's been retired for 20 years.

Trotsky

billhoward
Prezi is more casual so kids might like that, and the font looks like handwriting so maybe they'll like that.

Kids probably aren't even aware of handwriting anymore.

I had an interesting experience similar to that in China a few months ago. A Chinese co-worker of mine was trying to write down our order in a restaurant, and she had to stop and think about how to write the words. She said that people use computers and cell phones so much now that they don't actually remember in detail what the characters actually look like anymore.

Jeff Hopkins '82

Trotsky

billhoward
Prezi is more casual so kids might like that, and the font looks like handwriting so maybe they'll like that.

Kids probably aren't even aware of handwriting anymore.

I had an interesting experience similar to that in China a few months ago. A Chinese co-worker of mine was trying to write down our order in a restaurant, and she had to stop and think about how to write the words. She said that people use computers and cell phones so much now that they don't actually remember in detail what the characters actually look like anymore.

To be fair, I can't imagine how difficult Chinese was even when people were literate.

Jeff Hopkins '82

Trotsky

billhoward
Prezi is more casual so kids might like that, and the font looks like handwriting so maybe they'll like that.

Kids probably aren't even aware of handwriting anymore.

I had an interesting experience similar to that in China a few months ago. A Chinese co-worker of mine was trying to write down our order in a restaurant, and she had to stop and think about how to write the words. She said that people use computers and cell phones so much now that they don't actually remember in detail what the characters actually look like anymore.

So the waiter takes the menu to the kitchen and points at the picture.

Trotsky

Jeff Hopkins '82

Trotsky

billhoward
Prezi is more casual so kids might like that, and the font looks like handwriting so maybe they'll like that.

Kids probably aren't even aware of handwriting anymore.

I had an interesting experience similar to that in China a few months ago. A Chinese co-worker of mine was trying to write down our order in a restaurant, and she had to stop and think about how to write the words. She said that people use computers and cell phones so much now that they don't actually remember in detail what the characters actually look like anymore.

To be fair, I can't imagine how difficult Chinese was even when people were literate.

Most people I know stopped writing in cursive when they were no longer required to use it. I recall asking a teacher sometime in middle school whether I could just print; they said "sure", and quickly I dropped cursive entirely. Cursive writing is retarded.

As far as Chinese characters (and pictograms in general) go, computers are really driving their obsolescence: phonetic alphabets have always had lots of advantages, but the asymmetric ease/difficulty of typing in phonetic alphabets/pictograms is quickly making pictograms as pointless as cursive writing. One day they'll be mostly gone except as a stylistic element in advertising, and it will shock old people, while everyone else gets on with their lives. Cursive writing is a joke nowadays; I see no reason why Chinese characters will be any different at some point.

The reason Audi and now BMW are putting touchpads in cars is to ease destination input in china. Or they could just use voice recognition.

Kyle Rose

Trotsky

Jeff Hopkins '82

Trotsky

billhoward
Prezi is more casual so kids might like that, and the font looks like handwriting so maybe they'll like that.

Kids probably aren't even aware of handwriting anymore.

I had an interesting experience similar to that in China a few months ago. A Chinese co-worker of mine was trying to write down our order in a restaurant, and she had to stop and think about how to write the words. She said that people use computers and cell phones so much now that they don't actually remember in detail what the characters actually look like anymore.

To be fair, I can't imagine how difficult Chinese was even when people were literate.

Most people I know stopped writing in cursive when they were no longer required to use it. I recall asking a teacher sometime in middle school whether I could just print; they said "sure", and quickly I dropped cursive entirely. Cursive writing is retarded.

As far as Chinese characters (and pictograms in general) go, computers are really driving their obsolescence: phonetic alphabets have always had lots of advantages, but the asymmetric ease/difficulty of typing in phonetic alphabets/pictograms is quickly making pictograms as pointless as cursive writing. One day they'll be mostly gone except as a stylistic element in advertising, and it will shock old people, while everyone else gets on with their lives. Cursive writing is a joke nowadays; I see no reason why Chinese characters will be any different at some point.

Then the only issue is writing the language to get the tones right. They use special diacritical marks in Vietnamese, and would have to be able to do that easily with pinyin. Even so it would take some doing because a lot of sounds have 30-40 words associated with them, so which one does the pinyin really mean?

I know with Korean the ROK gov't adopted a new transliteration system in the mid-80's that used some less common marks on some of the vowels. Then they realized that system required special keyboards to use, so they went back to the old system that didn't have those marks. Of course they need specialized keyboards for the Korean alphabet itself, but that's beside the point.

Kyle Rose
Cursive writing is a joke nowadays

So is capitalization and speaking and thinking in complete sentences.

The invention of writing robbed us of our memory -- projection of thought into the past. The invention of keypads is robbing us of contemplation -- projection of thought into the future. What's left is thought that exists solely in the present.

My cat has no use for writing, either.

Trotsky

Kyle Rose
Cursive writing is a joke nowadays

So is capitalization and speaking and thinking in complete sentences.

The invention of writing robbed us of our memory -- projection of thought into the past. The invention of keypads is robbing us of contemplation -- projection of thought into the future. What's left is thought that exists solely in the present.

The purpose of language is communication. Cursive writing is style over substance. Arguably, capitalization and complete sentences are, too, which is why people use less and less of them over time, at least in casual conversation.

We've also lost a lot of tenses/conjugations and decelensions over the millennia since the bad old days of early ancient Latin, but looking around I don't really think it has resulted in the end of civilization.

Chill out, old man. The world really isn't going to hell the closer you get to a walker.

My cat has no use for writing, either.

And yet research suggests people are actually getting smarter at the same time language is becoming simpler. I suspect there is no causation here, just that the two are largely orthogonal.

Kyle Rose

Most people I know stopped writing in cursive when they were no longer required to use it. I recall asking a teacher sometime in middle school whether I could just print; they said "sure", and quickly I dropped cursive entirely. Cursive writing is retarded.

I find my style defaults to a print-cursive hybrid. In specific cases, I find I can simply write faster using cursive. If it's a note for my own use, I'll use cursive more predominantly. If legibility matters, or I know that others will be reading, chances are greater I'll use a printed style. By my own experience, I write printed words more slowly, which means, quite literally, that printed handwriting is "retarded" for me.

RichH

Kyle Rose

Most people I know stopped writing in cursive when they were no longer required to use it. I recall asking a teacher sometime in middle school whether I could just print; they said "sure", and quickly I dropped cursive entirely. Cursive writing is retarded.

I find my style defaults to a print-cursive hybrid. In specific cases, I find I can simply write faster using cursive. If it's a note for my own use, I'll use cursive more predominantly. If legibility matters, or I know that others will be reading, chances are greater I'll use a printed style. By my own experience, I write printed words more slowly, which means, quite literally, that printed handwriting is "retarded" for me.

The point of cursive is speed. The tradeoff is legibility. Printed text is pretty much as a rule more legibile than cursive. To what degree cursive is less legible or faster th printing depends on the skill of the person using it and sometimes the skill of the person reading it.

I find cursive very difficult to read and my crusive writing is either almost illegible or rally, really slow to write. I consider it a fairly useless skill and made that decision in the early 80's before I ever used a word processor.

Kyle Rose
And yet research suggests people are actually getting smarter at the same time language is becoming simpler. I suspect there is no causation here, just that the two are largely orthogonal.

Give or take our diversion into CB radio shortly after platform shoes. A one-two punch with more wallop than Pannell to Mock.

We recently had a month of assorted job candidate talks here, and I was tempted to give extra points to anyone whose slides were done in beamer.