00:00SPEAKER- Okay, we just had a moment of silence
00:01SPEAKERfor that burning man cold open that you burned.
00:05SPEAKERHey, Brad, you know what the first Google Doodle was?
00:07SPEAKER- I do, 'cause I just went and looked it up.
00:09SPEAKERYeah, you were talking about Google Doodles
00:11SPEAKERright before this, and I said,
00:13SPEAKER"I wonder if they archived those."
00:15SPEAKERAnd sure enough, they did.
00:16SPEAKER- They did.
00:17SPEAKER- It said google.com/doodles.
00:20SPEAKERYou cannot filter by year, as far as I can tell.
00:23SPEAKERYou can't search, but you can't just like...
00:26SPEAKERI don't see a way to...
00:27SPEAKERAnyway, the point is,
00:27SPEAKERit's just one of those endlessly infinite pages
00:29SPEAKERis there a term?
00:30SPEAKER- Yeah, it's an infinite scrolling page
00:32SPEAKERis what it's called. - Infinite scrolling page, okay.
00:34SPEAKERYou just have to do that for...
00:35SPEAKER- It's not infinite though, is it?
00:37SPEAKER- No, but I held the end key for, let's say,
00:40SPEAKERthree to four straight minutes.
00:42SPEAKER- Wow.
00:43SPEAKER- 'Cause they've done a lot of doodles over the years
00:45SPEAKERand finally made it all the way back to August 30th, 1998.
00:49SPEAKER- Wow, really?
00:50SPEAKERIt was that long ago?
00:51SPEAKER- That was the first Google Doodle.
00:53SPEAKERShould we mention the Google Doodles
00:54SPEAKERor when you go to google.com
00:56SPEAKERand they've done something festive to the logo for the day?
00:58SPEAKER- Yeah, I remember the first time
01:00SPEAKERwhen I was an early Google user in the early 2000s
01:04SPEAKERand I went to the homepage,
01:05SPEAKER'cause you used to have to go to the homepage
01:06SPEAKERto search on Google and the logo changed
01:09SPEAKERand I was like, "What the hell is going on here?"
01:10SPEAKERThis is...
01:12SPEAKERSomeone has hacked the Google.
01:14SPEAKER- Yeah, so I made it to the bottom
01:16SPEAKERand saw what the very first one was
01:18SPEAKERand I was like, "Oh, we should do this for the cold open."
01:20SPEAKERAnd I was like, "You're never gonna guess what it is."
01:22SPEAKERAnd you were like, "What is it?"
01:24SPEAKER- I said, "What is it?
01:24SPEAKERSomething unfortunate like Burning Man?"
01:26SPEAKER- No, I said, "It's way too perfect."
01:29SPEAKERAnd then you instantly said, "What is it, Burning Man?"
01:33SPEAKERIt is totally Burning Man.
01:34SPEAKERIt was the first Google, of course, of course.
01:38SPEAKER- See, when you tell the story that way,
01:39SPEAKERit's like I burned the cold open, Brad, not you.
01:42SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, if you had guessed that on here,
01:44SPEAKERit would have been way better, but...
01:45SPEAKER- That's true.
01:46SPEAKER- The other weird thing is that that was August '98,
01:48SPEAKERBurning Man, or October '98 was Google Beta.
01:51SPEAKERSo I think they may have done a Burning Man Doodle
01:54SPEAKERbefore it was even publicly available
01:56SPEAKERas a product.
01:57SPEAKER- That makes sense.
01:58SPEAKERI don't remember.
01:59SPEAKERI really don't remember using Google
02:00SPEAKERbefore I lived in San Francisco,
02:02SPEAKERand that would have been after June of 2000, so.
02:04SPEAKER- I think I might've used it in the college dorms still,
02:07SPEAKERwhich still puts me around 2000-ish
02:09SPEAKERbefore I was out of there.
02:10SPEAKERSo around the same time, I think.
02:12SPEAKERSearch engines.
02:14SPEAKER- Metacrawler.
02:15SPEAKER- Metacrawler.
02:16SPEAKERAsk Jeeves is always the joke answer.
02:19SPEAKER- Look, man, Jeeves knew what was up.
02:21SPEAKERI, looking at the decline of search engines
02:25SPEAKERand the rise of all these new AI assisted things
02:28SPEAKERthat are not exactly search engines,
02:29SPEAKERand I would say somehow even less reliable search engines.
02:34SPEAKER- Yeah, that's right.
02:35SPEAKERThat's like, yeah, the Google Doodles aren't relevant anymore
02:37SPEAKER'cause we're all gonna move to Bing soon, right?
02:38SPEAKER'Cause they've got the AI now.
02:40SPEAKER- I mean, DuckDuckGo does use Bing,
02:42SPEAKERso maybe we are gonna all use Bing,
02:45SPEAKERand the future is...
02:49SPEAKERLook, man, I just want Yahoo back, okay?
02:52SPEAKERI want a person-curated list of websites that are cool.
02:55SPEAKER- It is really hard for me to remember these days
02:57SPEAKERthat Yahoo started as a search engine.
02:59SPEAKERIt became so many other things,
03:00SPEAKERand then it became a joke at the end.
03:03SPEAKER- Nothing at all.
03:04SPEAKER- It used to just be a thing you typed search into,
03:06SPEAKERdidn't it?
03:07SPEAKER- Yahoo!
03:09SPEAKER- Yep, that's the one.
03:10SPEAKERHave you been to Bing
03:11SPEAKERsince they launched the chat GPT stuff?
03:14SPEAKER- No, did they really launch chat GPT stuff?
03:16SPEAKERI've been really busy this weekend.
03:18SPEAKER- Oh, yeah, yeah, that's the, yes.
03:19SPEAKERThey have rolled out.
03:20SPEAKERI think you have to wait-list.
03:22SPEAKERYes, you have to wait-list into it,
03:23SPEAKERso you can't just go use it off the cuff right now.
03:26SPEAKERThey're pitching it as introducing the new Bing,
03:28SPEAKERask real questions, get complete answers,
03:30SPEAKERand then they show you some sample questions.
03:33SPEAKERYou tell me, you have to be very specific
03:35SPEAKERwith the prompting, right?
03:36SPEAKERAnd very complete sentence?
03:39SPEAKER- The more information you give it,
03:41SPEAKERthe closer it gets to what you want.
03:42SPEAKER- Okay, because the sample searches
03:44SPEAKERthey're throwing out here are not like...
03:46SPEAKERI don't know how you search,
03:47SPEAKERbut I'm extremely utilitarian
03:49SPEAKERand just kind of like large group recipes or whatever,
03:53SPEAKERsomething like that, but this prompt is,
03:54SPEAKERI need to throw a dinner party
03:56SPEAKERfor six people who are vegetarian.
03:57SPEAKERCan you suggest a three-course menu
03:59SPEAKERwith a chocolate dessert?
04:00SPEAKERIt's so complete sentence.
04:02SPEAKERIt's so like you're talking to a person
04:04SPEAKERand not just engaging with an algorithm.
04:06SPEAKER- That is much, it's much less keyword-oriented.
04:10SPEAKERLike Google over the years has learned
04:11SPEAKERhow to pluck the keywords out of the thing
04:13SPEAKERthat you type in there for people who do that.
04:15SPEAKER- Yes, I just, I naturally just started
04:17SPEAKERputting nothing but keywords as that.
04:19SPEAKER- Yeah, and like I do parentheses or quotes
04:23SPEAKERand pluses and minuses and big letters
04:25SPEAKERand all that stuff to hone down the thing that I want.
04:29SPEAKERI mean, I do think that the GPT stuff
04:31SPEAKERis gonna end up being a skill that is probably useful,
04:35SPEAKERbut people talking about plugging into search
04:37SPEAKERis one of the things that in like 10 years
04:38SPEAKERwe're gonna look back and be like,
04:39SPEAKER"Man, those people were dumb asses."
04:44SPEAKER- Anyway, what else is going on in the internet?
04:47SPEAKERWe set up a Mastodon for the content.town residence.
04:51SPEAKER- That's true.
04:52SPEAKER- Which includes everybody listening to this right now,
04:54SPEAKERI assume.
04:55SPEAKERYou can come to mastodon.content.town
04:58SPEAKERand sign up for an account there.
05:02SPEAKERWe are asking people who use the site a lot
05:04SPEAKERto maybe consider signing up for the Patreon
05:05SPEAKERif they haven't already at patreon.com/techbaud,
05:08SPEAKERbut everybody's welcome.
05:10SPEAKERThere are signups on just so we don't have spam.
05:12SPEAKERThere's still an occasional spam influx,
05:15SPEAKERand we're trying to mitigate the impact of that
05:17SPEAKER'cause the moderation team is limited right now.
05:22SPEAKERIt's me, basically.
05:24SPEAKERAnd yeah, so sign up.
05:27SPEAKERIt takes me no more than a day or two at the most
05:29SPEAKERto approve new folks.
05:32SPEAKERAnd it's been really nice.
05:35SPEAKERThere's a lovely little community
05:37SPEAKERthat's forming on the local page of that Mastodon instance.
05:41SPEAKERSo for people who don't know,
05:43SPEAKERyou can see everybody that you follow on the Metaverse,
05:46SPEAKERon the Fediverse, when you sign up for Mastodon.
05:49SPEAKERBut you can also hit a button that says local,
05:52SPEAKERand it just shows you the public posts
05:54SPEAKERfrom people that live on the same server as you.
05:56SPEAKERSo it's an opportunity for shared community,
06:00SPEAKERfor community to form on each individual Mastodon instance,
06:04SPEAKERwhich is, I think, my favorite part of the whole thing
06:06SPEAKER'cause it feels like something in between.
06:08SPEAKERIt feels almost like a dorm message board.
06:11SPEAKER- Sure, okay.
06:12SPEAKER- Everybody lives in the same space.
06:13SPEAKERWe all have the same interests,
06:14SPEAKERand presumably, we live in the same town, right?
06:20SPEAKERContent town.
06:23SPEAKER- In the future, content town will be the only town.
06:26SPEAKER- Look, we're like, Brad, don't tell 'em.
06:28SPEAKERWe gotta keep that part secret, okay?
06:31SPEAKERBut no, so when somebody posts a picture of their dog,
06:33SPEAKERI see a picture of their dog,
06:34SPEAKEReven if I don't necessarily follow them,
06:36SPEAKERwhich is kind of nice.
06:37SPEAKERAnd obviously, it's opt-in.
06:39SPEAKER- You know what, always nice
06:40SPEAKERwhen you're served unsolicited pictures of dogs.
06:42SPEAKERI'm gonna go and tell you,
06:43SPEAKERI couldn't follow the dogs to dawn tag,
06:46SPEAKERwhich is the one that is just people posting pictures
06:49SPEAKERof their dogs constantly because it was too distracting.
06:51SPEAKERBut I can dip into the local feed
06:55SPEAKERand see Cyridar's dog occasionally.
06:57SPEAKER- I love the idea that you're gripped with this canine mania.
07:00SPEAKERI can't stop looking at these dogs.
07:04SPEAKER- Brad, there were so fucking many dogs.
07:06SPEAKERIt was just dogs all the way down.
07:08SPEAKER- Okay, look, if that's the direction
07:09SPEAKERthe internet is going, maybe we're gonna be okay.
07:11SPEAKERThis cat stood on too.
07:13SPEAKER(upbeat music)
07:41SPEAKER- Welcome to "Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod."
07:44SPEAKERI'm Will. - I'm Brad.
07:45SPEAKER- Morning, Brad. - Good morning.
07:47SPEAKERI'm holding, I started to say I'm holding a book,
07:50SPEAKERbut I'm actually holding a sample chapter of a book,
07:52SPEAKERbut it's in kind of pamphlet form.
07:54SPEAKER- Yeah, Brad, we have a guest this week.
07:55SPEAKERHis name is Marcin Vicari.
07:57SPEAKERHe's a friend of mine,
07:59SPEAKERsomebody I met at some conferences years and years ago,
08:02SPEAKERbut, and has a long storied history
08:05SPEAKERof not doing the thing that we're gonna,
08:07SPEAKERnot doing other things
08:09SPEAKERthat we're not gonna talk about today,
08:10SPEAKERlike he was the design lead and typographer at Medium.
08:14SPEAKERHe did the Pac-Man Google Doodle when he was at Google.
08:16SPEAKER- Oh, right, that's, yes,
08:18SPEAKERthat's how the Google Doodles came up.
08:19SPEAKER- That is how we got to the Google Doodles.
08:20SPEAKERHe was not responsible for the Burning Man Doodle,
08:22SPEAKERas far as I know. - Okay.
08:25SPEAKER- But for the last eight years,
08:27SPEAKERMarcin has been working on a book about keyboards.
08:30SPEAKERThe book's available to order now on Kickstarter.
08:32SPEAKERIt's called "Shift Happens."
08:34SPEAKER- Yes. - It's a really very good name
08:35SPEAKERfor a keyboard book. - That's good.
08:37SPEAKERWe will put a link to that Kickstarter in the show notes
08:40SPEAKERif you want to go check it out.
08:41SPEAKER- Yeah, but, and I don't,
08:43SPEAKERlike, Marcin's a pretty humble guy.
08:45SPEAKERI don't know that he would say this,
08:48SPEAKERbut given the amount of time
08:50SPEAKERthat he's been working on it and the level,
08:52SPEAKERlike how he manages, how obsessive he is
08:55SPEAKERabout things he's excited about,
08:56SPEAKERI think it's probably safe to say,
08:59SPEAKEReven not having read the book yet,
09:01SPEAKERjust reading the sample chapter,
09:02SPEAKERthat this is gonna be a definitive work
09:04SPEAKERon the history of the keyboard.
09:05SPEAKER- It seems comprehensive.
09:06SPEAKERI mean, this is, I've only read this one chapter,
09:09SPEAKERbut it seems comprehensive.
09:10SPEAKER- Yeah, he sent us the second,
09:11SPEAKERI think it's the second chapter of the book.
09:12SPEAKERIt's about, he described them as shift wars
09:15SPEAKERof the late 1800s, where typewriter,
09:19SPEAKERthis is before QWERTY was completely locked down.
09:22SPEAKERIt was a time when the layout of the keyboard was wild,
09:25SPEAKERand people were upset that typewriter manufacturers
09:27SPEAKERwere putting non-functioning keys, like the shift key.
09:31SPEAKER- He gets into the sum in the interview
09:33SPEAKERthat you're about to hear,
09:33SPEAKERbut also, first of all,
09:35SPEAKERthis thing seems exhaustively researched,
09:37SPEAKERand that's one of the great things about talking to him,
09:40SPEAKERwas we talked about keyboards and typewriters a lot,
09:42SPEAKERbut we also talked about the process
09:43SPEAKERof writing a book like this.
09:45SPEAKERIt was also fun to just hear,
09:46SPEAKER"Hey, how did you juggle a day job with this sprawling work,
09:50SPEAKERand what was the international travel like
09:51SPEAKERto go see exotic typewriter hardware and stuff like that?"
09:55SPEAKERBut part of that research is, even in this one chapter,
09:59SPEAKERthere are photos of 150-year-old typewriters
10:02SPEAKERin here all over the place,
10:03SPEAKERbut he even went and dug up old newspaper articles
10:05SPEAKERand a bunch of advertising from the era,
10:09SPEAKERand the mudslinging between the typewriter makers
10:13SPEAKERof the late 19th is hilarious.
10:16SPEAKER- For example?
10:17SPEAKER- He mentions this in there, like there was this notion.
10:19SPEAKERSo, just to give a little context to what you'll hear,
10:22SPEAKERthe big debate was, is the shift key necessary,
10:25SPEAKERor should you have a single key on the keyboard
10:27SPEAKERfor every single character you can produce?
10:29SPEAKER- Yeah.
10:30SPEAKER- Should you have a shift key
10:31SPEAKERthat shifts between two or three different things,
10:33SPEAKERor should you have an entire uppercase alphabet of keys
10:35SPEAKERand an entire lowercase,
10:37SPEAKERand a key for every symbol and number?
10:39SPEAKERAnd the people who lean toward the latter,
10:42SPEAKERthe makers of the calligraph,
10:44SPEAKERI don't know what the name of the company was,
10:46SPEAKERthey were literally out there saying,
10:47SPEAKER"Why would you want a typewriter with a key
10:48SPEAKERthat produces no character?"
10:50SPEAKERLike, the shift key is inherently meaningless
10:53SPEAKERbecause nothing comes out when you press it.
10:55SPEAKERThey referred to the shift key as a gratuitous stroke,
10:58SPEAKERa kind of really ostentatious language
11:01SPEAKERof that period of time, mixed with, like,
11:03SPEAKERadvertising-level mudslinging, it's just hilarious.
11:06SPEAKER- Just the idea that a modifier key
11:09SPEAKERis going to be gratuitous is funny to me,
11:12SPEAKERlike, "Oh yeah, here's the key
11:14SPEAKERthat makes all of the other keys on your keyboard
11:15SPEAKERdo two things instead of one."
11:16SPEAKERNo, that's a bad key, man.
11:18SPEAKER- Yeah, that was, well, they had, look,
11:20SPEAKERthey made their bet and they had to sell it.
11:23SPEAKER- So anyway, let's kick it off with the machine.
11:25SPEAKER(upbeat music)
11:27SPEAKERI'm curious what it is about keyboards.
11:30SPEAKERLike, I've always found them kind of fascinating.
11:32SPEAKERI've tried different layouts, I've tried different styles,
11:34SPEAKERI've tried splits, I've tried gamer keyboards,
11:36SPEAKERI've done, you know, the fancy mechanicals, the whole thing.
11:39SPEAKERBut, I mean, do you think there's something inherent
11:41SPEAKERto the keyboard or is it just that it's the way
11:43SPEAKERwe interface with language now?
11:46SPEAKER- I think it's probably that,
11:49SPEAKERso I care a lot about typography and at some point,
11:52SPEAKERI realized that typography can be, like,
11:54SPEAKERreally anything you want.
11:56SPEAKERLike, it can be the kind of beauty,
11:59SPEAKERcan be the function, it could be the sort of mastery,
12:02SPEAKERit could be appreciation of history and there's, like,
12:06SPEAKERyou know, hundreds of years of typography history.
12:09SPEAKERIt could be just, like, a lot of nuances.
12:12SPEAKERIt could be, like, the big idea that we can express ourselves
12:14SPEAKERwith, you know, shapes.
12:16SPEAKERAnd as funny as it sounds, like, keyboards sort of start,
12:20SPEAKERmaybe I spent too much time, you know, investigating,
12:23SPEAKERlooking at them, et cetera,
12:24SPEAKERbut I sort of feel like this to me as well.
12:26SPEAKERLike, they've been, you know, they've been around for,
12:28SPEAKERI mean, 150 years, the iteration that we use, right?
12:32SPEAKERLike, people have been trying to do that for decades,
12:36SPEAKERif not centuries earlier, the technology just wasn't there.
12:39SPEAKERBut, you know, even in this, like, 150 years,
12:41SPEAKERSpanish, you know, everything from, again, the history
12:45SPEAKERand how the, you know, how the keyboards
12:50SPEAKERserve different purposes, right?
12:51SPEAKERThey used to be this very professional tool
12:53SPEAKERto literally, like, transcribe, you know,
12:59SPEAKERlike, Morse code to, you know, us chatting today
13:03SPEAKERwith our thumbs, you know,
13:05SPEAKERwhich is a very different use case.
13:06SPEAKERAnd sort of, like, everything that's around
13:08SPEAKERthe keyboards technologically, right,
13:10SPEAKERthey were attached to this huge early typewriters
13:12SPEAKERand now they're, you know, just made out of pixels
13:15SPEAKERand they don't really ever exist.
13:16SPEAKERAnd then there's, like, the kind of relatively new
13:20SPEAKERor new at scale idea of keyboards
13:22SPEAKERbeing the way to express yourself, right?
13:28SPEAKERLike, how your keyboard looks, how your keyboard sounds,
13:30SPEAKERlike, what switches to use, what keycaps, what layout.
13:34SPEAKERAnd then there's the whole, like, kind of mathematics
13:36SPEAKERand politics of layout that we could talk about, you know,
13:39SPEAKERthat it's like, there's not a decade
13:41SPEAKERor half a decade comes with somebody.
13:43SPEAKERIt's like, I fixed query.
13:45SPEAKERAnd of course they didn't.
13:46SPEAKERAnd maybe there's nothing to fix.
13:47SPEAKERMaybe there is.
13:48SPEAKERSo, just a lot going on.
13:50SPEAKERAnd there's, you know, the sort of gender issues,
13:54SPEAKERthe kind of international, like, you know,
13:58SPEAKERQWERTY in a way effectively colonized keyboards, right?
14:02SPEAKERIn a way, like, there's the sort of, you know,
14:04SPEAKERit just happens to be the American layout attached
14:07SPEAKERto the, you know, English alphabet
14:09SPEAKERand could have gone very differently maybe
14:12SPEAKERif typewriter started anywhere or somewhere else,
14:15SPEAKERbut we all type, any possible language can be expressed now
14:19SPEAKERwith QWERTY keyboard, right, which is really interesting.
14:21SPEAKERSo, I think there's, and on top of all of this,
14:25SPEAKERit's just this everyday object that serves us in the face,
14:28SPEAKERyou know, and there's something kind of interesting
14:31SPEAKERthat like people are telling me, like,
14:37SPEAKERI'm actually like, what is there to keyboards, right?
14:39SPEAKERAnd it's just like, well, here's two volumes
14:43SPEAKERand probably a third one if I weren't careful.
14:45SPEAKERSo, this is just a lot of really interesting stories.
14:47SPEAKERA lot of kind of designs decisions and half decisions
14:51SPEAKERand a lot of kind of accidents are happy or unhappy.
14:55SPEAKERAnd then how this sort of artifact came to be
14:58SPEAKERand the fact that it is maybe boring.
15:01SPEAKERAnd then on top of that, and I can continue,
15:03SPEAKERplease stop me, but it's also this beauty
15:05SPEAKERof like the human computer interaction,
15:07SPEAKERthe way that our fingers almost like bypass our brain
15:11SPEAKERto just like do the thing.
15:15SPEAKERThat whole area is just fascinating.
15:18SPEAKERI think fingers just happen to be like extremely good input
15:21SPEAKERand to some extent output the devices
15:24SPEAKERor output and to some extent input devices,
15:26SPEAKERdepending how you look at it.
15:27SPEAKERThat's just beautiful.
15:29SPEAKER- That idea is interesting, right?
15:30SPEAKERBecause like there was a period of time
15:32SPEAKERwhen like the fastest way for me to think about something
15:34SPEAKERwas to write it down by hand or to say it.
15:36SPEAKERAnd then I learned how to touch type.
15:38SPEAKERAnd that both in terms of like my actual output
15:45SPEAKERand my efficiency, but also now the fastest way
15:47SPEAKERfor me to think about something,
15:48SPEAKERif I need to think about what I wanna say
15:50SPEAKERand what I wanna write, the easiest way for me to do
15:51SPEAKERis open up a blank text file and just keep typing
15:56SPEAKERuntil what I want gets there.
15:58SPEAKERAnd that, like the keyboards literally changed my brain.
16:01SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, there's the whole idea.
16:03SPEAKERI think that's technically called transcription fluency
16:06SPEAKERand it's much lower than people think.
16:08SPEAKERLike you actually don't need to touch that.
16:09SPEAKERI think it's around 30 words per minute,
16:11SPEAKERwhich really is two fingers or two thumbs
16:13SPEAKERand very casually, like there's this threshold
16:16SPEAKERwhere typing doesn't, is no longer a chore for you,
16:19SPEAKERat least in a sort of casual way.
16:22SPEAKERIt's just a thing you do.
16:24SPEAKERAnd then it unlocks this sort of, I can write notes,
16:26SPEAKERI can put something to paper,
16:27SPEAKERI can just offload something from your brain.
16:31SPEAKERI can move things around because a keyboard
16:33SPEAKERand especially with a combination with a mouse,
16:36SPEAKERit's just like incredibly powerful editing tool, right?
16:38SPEAKERSo you can start like sort of collating your thoughts
16:40SPEAKERin different ways.
16:41SPEAKERAnd yeah, there's something like really amazing
16:45SPEAKERthat starting from the first typewriter 150 years ago,
16:48SPEAKERthe first, the commercial one that ended up
16:52SPEAKERmaking the keyboard what it is today,
16:54SPEAKERthat already allowed speeds like that.
16:57SPEAKERSo that was sort of kind of miraculous, I think to me, yeah.
17:01SPEAKER- There's almost something liberating
17:02SPEAKERabout learning to type, right?
17:03SPEAKERLike once you get to the point
17:04SPEAKERwhere you can do it incredibly fluidly,
17:06SPEAKERlike you can basically produce thoughts
17:08SPEAKERor record thoughts with your fingers
17:10SPEAKERalmost as fast as you can speak them, right?
17:11SPEAKERIt's almost second only to saying words,
17:14SPEAKERhow quickly you can get them out of your head
17:17SPEAKERand into kind of a documented form.
17:18SPEAKERIt's really freeing to me once you get really good at that.
17:22SPEAKERI wanted to ask, did you run into any kind of like
17:25SPEAKERmore primitive forms of not typewriters,
17:28SPEAKERbut other sort of real time ways of typesetting,
17:31SPEAKERthings that would not be recognizably,
17:33SPEAKERthe modern keyboard or typewriter,
17:35SPEAKERbut that existed prior to that,
17:37SPEAKERkind of had the same function
17:39SPEAKERwhile you were researching this?
17:40SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, it's actually kind of amazing
17:42SPEAKERbecause you see typewriters that look like sewing machines,
17:45SPEAKERyou see typewriters that look like clocks,
17:48SPEAKERyou see all sorts of versions of that.
17:49SPEAKERI think what was interesting about the typewriter
17:52SPEAKERwas that even the invention of the carbon paper
17:56SPEAKERwas like somebody trying to help.
17:58SPEAKERI think the story goes it was their love
18:02SPEAKERand she couldn't see.
18:04SPEAKERAnd he wanted to be like one of typewriter
18:07SPEAKERto help her express herself.
18:11SPEAKERThat's like another part of it.
18:12SPEAKERBut basically, I think typewriters always had to wait
18:15SPEAKERfor this kind of incredibly interesting moment
18:18SPEAKERwhere if you think of a typewriter,
18:19SPEAKERit's both has to be like an incredibly precise device.
18:23SPEAKERLike you have a letter that has to go in a certain place.
18:27SPEAKERWe are very attuned to seeing typesetting being wavy
18:32SPEAKERor not aligned.
18:33SPEAKERSo it had to be aligned in sort of two axis
18:36SPEAKERand reliable and there's all of the ink
18:38SPEAKERand stuff going in there.
18:40SPEAKERBut it also has to, at the same time,
18:43SPEAKERbe operated with like a lot of force.
18:45SPEAKERSo it's this delicate device that people are just pounding on
18:48SPEAKERover and over again.
18:49SPEAKERAnd so I think this, from what I understand,
18:54SPEAKERthat's just like incredibly hard to do.
18:56SPEAKERAnd so the very early typewriters,
19:00SPEAKERbut anyway, there were also typewriters
19:02SPEAKERabout counterweights, you know.
19:05SPEAKEREventually they borrowed the binding escapement from clocks.
19:08SPEAKERYou know, that's the thing that's kind of powers
19:09SPEAKERthe typewriter, it gives you this sort of weird combination.
19:12SPEAKERAnd yeah, and that happened to be like
19:15SPEAKERalmost exactly 150 years ago.
19:17SPEAKERBut everything before that,
19:19SPEAKERand I think there were at least 200 years.
19:20SPEAKERAnd you know, as you can imagine,
19:23SPEAKERthere's always a debate, what is first?
19:27SPEAKERAnd you know, there's a lot of European countries
19:29SPEAKERthat claim the first typewriter and that all makes sense.
19:33SPEAKERThere's always just a qualifier in front of first
19:37SPEAKERthat makes it real, but I think the one that we consider
19:41SPEAKERor that I would consider the first typewriter
19:43SPEAKERwas first of all, the first QWERTY typewriter.
19:47SPEAKERAnd second of all,
19:47SPEAKERthe one that actually ended up being mass marketed
19:50SPEAKERand is directly connected
19:52SPEAKERto pretty much every keyboard we use today.
19:55SPEAKER- That's the Remington?
19:56SPEAKER- Yeah, that's the, you know,
19:58SPEAKERI think originally it was called
20:00SPEAKERlike the Scholz and Glidden typewriter.
20:03SPEAKERThere's a whole story about like,
20:05SPEAKERdid Glidden deserve the credit?
20:07SPEAKERWe don't have to talk about it,
20:08SPEAKERbut eventually it was sort of a partnership with Remington
20:11SPEAKERand they renamed it Remington number one.
20:13SPEAKERAnd that's sort of what became basically every keyboard.
20:17SPEAKERIt really took over the market with an astonishing ease
20:21SPEAKERin a way that we're still kind of debating.
20:24SPEAKER- Was this Remington?
20:25SPEAKEROkay, so I have two questions out of this.
20:26SPEAKEROne is, does that mean we got QWERTY kind of just by default
20:30SPEAKERbecause it was the first one that was pretty good?
20:33SPEAKERAnd the other follow-up is,
20:35SPEAKERis this Remington the gun company
20:37SPEAKERor is it just a different company Remington?
20:38SPEAKER- That's how you know we're both from the South.
20:40SPEAKERI was also going to say like,
20:41SPEAKERthis isn't no relation to the firearms manufacturer, right?
20:45SPEAKER- It is the same company.
20:46SPEAKER- Oh, wow.
20:48SPEAKER- Or, you know, I don't know,
20:49SPEAKERthis may be the branch of the same company,
20:51SPEAKERbut, and I think it was in New York state,
20:57SPEAKERif I remember correctly, but yeah.
21:01SPEAKERSo that's actually what's really interesting,
21:03SPEAKERwhich is like, you know, QWERTY was first or first ish,
21:06SPEAKERyou know, and there were, especially, you know,
21:11SPEAKERwe're talking about late 1860s, early 1870s,
21:15SPEAKERand there were immediately attempts
21:20SPEAKERto make the layout better,
21:23SPEAKERincluding from the guy who invented QWERTY,
21:28SPEAKER'cause he got sort of frustrated with Remington actually,
21:30SPEAKERand kind of like, you know, he was the classic sort of like,
21:33SPEAKERI can still make it better.
21:34SPEAKERI can, you know, the kind of thinker, Chris Scholl's,
21:41SPEAKERbut no, it sort of ended up being,
21:46SPEAKERso, you know, there were like attempts to find like,
21:50SPEAKERyou know, what do we call like early,
21:51SPEAKERyou know, Dvorak itself is much, much later,
21:53SPEAKERbut, you know, some versions to improve the layout,
21:55SPEAKERsome versions to improve the mechanism and stuff like that.
21:57SPEAKERAnd just ended up that the combination of first of all,
22:01SPEAKERQWERTY just happened to be pretty good,
22:03SPEAKERlike for a lot of things, right?
22:05SPEAKERWe kind of consider this a bad layout today,
22:07SPEAKERor at least many people, but it actually ended up,
22:10SPEAKERto the extent we can figure it out,
22:12SPEAKERbecause not that much documentation has been left
22:15SPEAKERfrom that time.
22:17SPEAKERThe QWERTY was actually like pretty well thought out,
22:20SPEAKERand it was there to solve a lot of actual user problems.
22:26SPEAKERIt wasn't to slow people down,
22:27SPEAKERit was actually to not slow them down.
22:29SPEAKERAnd it was to support specific use cases,
22:33SPEAKERlike, you know, typing the,
22:35SPEAKERagain, I mentioned like the Morse code communication
22:38SPEAKERon paper and stuff like that.
22:39SPEAKERAnd so that ended up being good.
22:42SPEAKERHow much of it was intentional, we don't know,
22:46SPEAKERlike maybe the fact that it supported touch typing,
22:48SPEAKERwhich also wasn't invented then yet,
22:50SPEAKERtouch typing had to wait for 20 years,
22:52SPEAKERmaybe a happy accident, maybe not,
22:54SPEAKERwe don't know the fact that sort of alternates
22:56SPEAKERtwo hands so nicely,
22:58SPEAKERbut also Remington was just like really good
23:00SPEAKERat selling typewriters and promoting them
23:01SPEAKERand combining, you know, if you were touch typing school,
23:06SPEAKERwe give you a typewriter,
23:08SPEAKERbut, you know, you have to put the label prominently
23:10SPEAKERor some version of sort of like that kind of stuff,
23:12SPEAKERwhich, you know, depending on how you look at it
23:14SPEAKERis maybe a little depressing, but also kind of like,
23:17SPEAKERyou know, that's exactly the lesson
23:19SPEAKERthat maybe August Vorak didn't learn,
23:21SPEAKERwhich is like making a quote unquote perfect layout
23:25SPEAKERonly will get you that far.
23:27SPEAKERYou also have to like get it on the market
23:29SPEAKERand figure out how it works and how it feels
23:31SPEAKERand all that kind of stuff.
23:32SPEAKERSo, yeah, so as early as like the Remington number one
23:36SPEAKERhappened, there were people trying to make better layouts,
23:39SPEAKERbetter keyboards and whatnot,
23:41SPEAKERand it sort of ended up trancing them all
23:44SPEAKERfrom the very first years, which is kind of interesting.
23:47SPEAKER- You sent us a sample chapter from the book
23:50SPEAKERabout the shift key that had a bunch of layouts
23:52SPEAKERfrom that era in it that was fascinating.
23:55SPEAKERLike there were a lot of layouts
23:58SPEAKERthat were pretty recognizable for today,
24:01SPEAKERbut then there were also some that had
24:02SPEAKERthe upper case, lower case keys
24:06SPEAKERkind of encircling each other, ensconcing each other,
24:08SPEAKERwhich was, it's just, it's fascinating.
24:11SPEAKERWho, like, I never would never even considered
24:13SPEAKERthat the shift key was an invention at some point,
24:15SPEAKERbut of course it was, that makes perfect sense.
24:17SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, that's like the,
24:19SPEAKERmy book is called Shift Happens,
24:20SPEAKERwhich is, you know, partly like a joke.
24:22SPEAKER(laughs)
24:24SPEAKERI always thought it was maybe like too crass of a joke,
24:27SPEAKERbut people kind of really.
24:30SPEAKER- Look, I think you're going to be fine.
24:31SPEAKERNo, I wouldn't worry about that anymore.
24:33SPEAKERI think you're okay.
24:34SPEAKER- I got used to it myself,
24:36SPEAKERbut it also happens to be this like interesting,
24:37SPEAKERlike keyboards sort of happen, right?
24:41SPEAKERObviously people design keyboards
24:43SPEAKERand people made an effort to put a certain key
24:46SPEAKERin a certain place, but also in a way,
24:49SPEAKERnobody was really in control.
24:51SPEAKERYou know, things just happened through path dependence
24:53SPEAKERand legacy consideration.
24:55SPEAKERMy joke is like, why is this key
24:57SPEAKERon this place on your keyboard?
24:58SPEAKERWell, because it was there on the keyboard before that.
25:00SPEAKERThat's literally the answer for every key.
25:03SPEAKERWhy is like J that nobody uses right under your finger,
25:06SPEAKERright, or semicolon so close.
25:09SPEAKERBut yeah, Shift was sort of like the first battle
25:14SPEAKERafter QWERTY.
25:15SPEAKERAnd it was interesting because it was sort of like,
25:19SPEAKERin a way technological, in a way kind of political,
25:23SPEAKERthe actual inventor of the QWERTY tech provider
25:29SPEAKERoriginally thought we don't need Shift.
25:32SPEAKERWhy would you care?
25:34SPEAKERWhich, you know, sort of an interesting approach.
25:37SPEAKERAnd we see it over and over again in history
25:38SPEAKERwhere, you know, uppercase computer, uppercase texting,
25:41SPEAKERyou know, and then, yeah, there was this sort of,
25:46SPEAKERyou know, do we need one Shift?
25:48SPEAKERWhere does it go?
25:49SPEAKERDo we need two Shifts?
25:50SPEAKERAnd I don't mean like two doing the same thing,
25:52SPEAKERtwo doing different things, right?
25:54SPEAKERIt's an interesting kind of correlation
25:55SPEAKERbetween like the more modifier keys you add,
25:58SPEAKERthe fewer keys you need,
26:00SPEAKERwhich, you know, a century later you see
26:02SPEAKERwith a space cadet keyboard, you know,
26:04SPEAKERthe infamous space standard keyboard
26:05SPEAKERwith like 5,000 combinations.
26:07SPEAKERBut yeah, they were battling it out in the 1860s,
26:10SPEAKERsorry, 70s and 80s.
26:11SPEAKERAnd they were really, it was really funny how,
26:14SPEAKERand of course there were keyboards without Shift at all,
26:16SPEAKERright, it was just like uppercase keys,
26:18SPEAKERindependent, as you said, from lowercase keys,
26:20SPEAKERwhich makes sense.
26:21SPEAKERAnd it's actually hasn't been proven to be particularly bad.
26:25SPEAKERAnd there were, you know, all these ads saying like,
26:28SPEAKERwhy do you pay for a key that doesn't do anything?
26:31SPEAKEROr how would you know what letter you output
26:33SPEAKERif you don't see it with your own eyes on the key cap?
26:36SPEAKERAnd it's really fun.
26:37SPEAKERAnd it's, you know,
26:38SPEAKERit's this flowery language of the 19th century
26:40SPEAKERand it's kind of amazing.
26:43SPEAKERAnd again, it wasn't as much Remington
26:47SPEAKERthat the next big hit,
26:49SPEAKERwhich was the Underwood typewriter,
26:51SPEAKERthat basically said, we're just gonna do shifts,
26:53SPEAKERyou know, in the lower row on the left, on the right.
26:55SPEAKERSo you can use double, you know, whatever finger you want,
26:58SPEAKERmake them a little bit bigger because Fitts' law
27:01SPEAKERrequires, you know, the further you are from the center,
27:04SPEAKERthe bigger area to compensate, you know, for a distance.
27:07SPEAKERThey just did it right.
27:09SPEAKERAnd they did a bunch of other things right.
27:10SPEAKERAnd that sort of ended up solidifying that,
27:13SPEAKERthat layout that we still see today, except,
27:15SPEAKERand this is like the funny footnote
27:17SPEAKERand I'm spoiling maybe the book,
27:19SPEAKERbut if you look at the iPhone,
27:21SPEAKERwhich is, or in the Android keyboards,
27:23SPEAKERwhich are arguably the most used keyboards today, right?
27:26SPEAKERBy typing, they actually have two independent shifts,
27:30SPEAKERone for lowercase, uppercase, one for symbols,
27:33SPEAKERwhich was the thing that also happened in the 80s
27:36SPEAKERand lost then.
27:37SPEAKERSo in a way that double shift layout just needed to wait,
27:42SPEAKERhowever many decades or over a century to actually,
27:47SPEAKERyou know, take off because that saves you
27:49SPEAKERthe precious space on the screen for one row,
27:53SPEAKERwhich ended up being much more important for smartphones
27:55SPEAKERthan it was for typewriters.
27:57SPEAKER- I was kind of shocked reading this chapter,
27:59SPEAKERhow much of that technology from the late 19th century
28:01SPEAKERkind of predicted stuff that's going on now,
28:03SPEAKERlike the Fontana baby that you mentioned,
28:05SPEAKERI think you said it has four different layers,
28:07SPEAKERfour different shift modes, is that right?
28:08SPEAKERWhich is like, like a 60% or a 40% like mechanical
28:12SPEAKERwith a bunch of different layers in it, you know,
28:13SPEAKERit's the same thing 150 years ago.
28:15SPEAKER- Yeah, some people's like brains and fingers
28:17SPEAKERjust work like this, right?
28:18SPEAKERLike I wanna, like it gets very close to chording
28:22SPEAKERor is it chording or chording?
28:24SPEAKERI never said that word.
28:25SPEAKER- Chording, chording is the, yeah.
28:27SPEAKER- Thank you, yeah, chording, which is like,
28:30SPEAKERwe talked just earlier about early typewriters
28:34SPEAKERand a lot of them were based on music keyboards
28:40SPEAKERbecause that was the only quote unquote keyboard
28:42SPEAKERthat was available in a way the keyboards
28:45SPEAKERthat we used today should be called button boards
28:47SPEAKERbecause they're not keys in a musical sense, right?
28:50SPEAKERThey're just buttons.
28:52SPEAKERBut eventually we realized like,
28:55SPEAKERoh, we don't do this chording very well for typing
29:00SPEAKERbecause it's not needed with the exception of cello typing,
29:02SPEAKERwith the exception of maybe, you know, modifier keys, right?
29:05SPEAKERLike today.
29:07SPEAKERSo, but yeah, I think if you get really adapted chording
29:12SPEAKERin whatever configuration, you can move much faster.
29:14SPEAKER- Like, so it sounds like the book covers everything, right?
29:16SPEAKERFrom the dawn of the modern typewriter
29:18SPEAKERall the way through iPhone and Android keyboards
29:21SPEAKERand software keyboards and like the modern mechanical,
29:24SPEAKERlike the, I assume both the, you know,
29:28SPEAKERyou can make a hyper customized keyboard
29:30SPEAKERthat is exactly what you want all the way down to every,
29:32SPEAKERyou know, when you buy a laptop,
29:34SPEAKERyou get whatever keyboard you want,
29:35SPEAKERwhether it's good or bad, assuming, you know,
29:39SPEAKERlike what, do you feel like you missed anything?
29:41SPEAKERI mean, I know there's always more.
29:43SPEAKERIt's, you know, it's, so I think the answer is obviously yes.
29:48SPEAKERI think what I understand what's gonna happen
29:50SPEAKERis the book comes out and immediately people were just like,
29:52SPEAKERoh, I have this great story for you.
29:54SPEAKERAnd I'm like, where were you before?
29:56SPEAKERBut of course that's how it works.
29:57SPEAKERLike that's kind of the, I mean, even outside of keyboards,
30:01SPEAKERI think what I've learned in the process of doing this
30:04SPEAKERis like, you know, how to chase stories
30:07SPEAKERand how hard it is to chase stories because,
30:10SPEAKERso yes, the book sort of covers the 150 years.
30:14SPEAKERObviously not everything that happened
30:16SPEAKERand not every keyboard because that's impossible.
30:19SPEAKERAnd some of those keyboards are kind of boring honestly,
30:23SPEAKERright?
30:24SPEAKERLike there's like nothing to say more than this existed
30:26SPEAKERand people loved it.
30:27SPEAKERAnd there was this interesting thing about
30:30SPEAKERhow do you tell, you know, this 40 chapters
30:33SPEAKERin a way that feels coherent.
30:34SPEAKERAnd to me, it was, first of all,
30:36SPEAKERwhat are the stories that I already heard that like,
30:40SPEAKERI think they're just really cool stories
30:41SPEAKERand they need to happen.
30:42SPEAKERThey need to be in a book because they're just great.
30:46SPEAKERAnd then there was, what are the keyboards
30:49SPEAKERthat I need to put in a book because they were important.
30:53SPEAKERAnd if they don't have any stories attached to them,
30:56SPEAKERwhat do I do?
30:57SPEAKERRight, do I come up with a narrative
30:59SPEAKERthat makes them kind of interesting to read?
31:01SPEAKERDo I do something else?
31:04SPEAKERAnd then the last one was, you know,
31:07SPEAKERare there people around that I could talk to that might,
31:09SPEAKERand that's the interesting thing for me
31:11SPEAKERbecause people often don't know
31:13SPEAKERthat they have good stories waiting, right?
31:14SPEAKERThey kind of like, oh, I just did this thing
31:16SPEAKERwith this computer or I did this keyboard
31:19SPEAKERand it's just for some art to me.
31:21SPEAKERI'm like, what are you talking about?
31:22SPEAKERYou're blowing my mind right now.
31:23SPEAKEREverybody needs to hear this.
31:26SPEAKERSo that was that sort of like sort of
31:27SPEAKERwhat I imagine is more or less of being a historian, right?
31:29SPEAKERLike or a journalist or interviewer, which I'm not.
31:33SPEAKERAnd there's a lot of lessons there,
31:35SPEAKERbut to give you like a specific example
31:37SPEAKERthat really, really surprised me was I,
31:43SPEAKERlike one of the stories that,
31:45SPEAKERlike one of the late additions to the book
31:46SPEAKERthat actually just happened last year
31:49SPEAKERwas somebody posted that Instagram photo
31:52SPEAKERof this guy holding this peculiar looking laser,
31:56SPEAKERpointing it at a printed page with his typewriter.
32:00SPEAKERNever seen this before.
32:02SPEAKERAnd the caption just said laser eraser
32:04SPEAKERor something like this.
32:06SPEAKERAnd I'm like, wait, what?
32:07SPEAKERAnd so I started digging and it's like,
32:09SPEAKERif you look up laser eraser on the internet today,
32:13SPEAKERthere's not that much about it, which is surprising.
32:16SPEAKERSo-
32:17SPEAKER- Was this a real product?
32:18SPEAKER- So yeah, so it was a prototype.
32:21SPEAKERSo basically one of the co-inventors of the laser
32:25SPEAKERwas so fed up with typos that he made this prototype
32:30SPEAKERto actually just like remove the typo.
32:33SPEAKERIf you press the wrong key, you could just like zap it
32:36SPEAKERfrom the page.
32:38SPEAKER- Vaporize the ink, holy cow.
32:40SPEAKER- Yeah, and there's apparently like a way to do this
32:43SPEAKERquickly enough so it doesn't affect the paper.
32:45SPEAKERAnd it's, I forgot, it's not that much energy, honestly.
32:49SPEAKERIt was one of the like early use cases for the laser
32:51SPEAKERand he made a prototype.
32:52SPEAKERHe actually brought it on TV to show to Walter Cronkite.
32:56SPEAKERAnd he spent like a decade along with other people
33:02SPEAKERat Stanford University trying to bring it to market
33:04SPEAKERand they couldn't in the end.
33:06SPEAKERBecause A, it's kind of expensive.
33:11SPEAKERB, it was too big.
33:16SPEAKERC, people started worrying about the danger of lasers
33:19SPEAKERjust like about like five to 10 years after lasers
33:21SPEAKERactually came to be.
33:22SPEAKERPeople were just like, ah, should we be doing this at home?
33:24SPEAKER- Yeah, all these laser researchers have bad vision
33:26SPEAKERall of a sudden, I wonder why.
33:28SPEAKERAnd then, but then like kind of IBM,
33:32SPEAKERthere were sort of two interesting codas to this.
33:35SPEAKERFirst of all, IBM released "Correcting Selectric" in 1973,
33:39SPEAKERwhich approached the same issue like chemically.
33:43SPEAKERThey just invented a different kind of tape with film
33:47SPEAKERthat you could just remove from paper
33:50SPEAKERif you did it fast enough to this like other backspace key.
33:54SPEAKERAnd it worked really, really well.
33:55SPEAKERAnd of course computers came around
33:57SPEAKERand then with computers,
33:59SPEAKERlike the backspace is almost by default,
34:01SPEAKERlike it's so much easier to lose data than to keep it, right?
34:04SPEAKERSo that's a given.
34:06SPEAKERBut what was really interesting about this was to me
34:09SPEAKERwas this typing existed for so many decades
34:13SPEAKERand we take backspace for granted today,
34:19SPEAKERbut there were like 80, 90 years
34:22SPEAKERwhere a lot of typing was just retyping.
34:24SPEAKERAnd it was frustrating because if you made a typo,
34:27SPEAKERyou had to use white out or some other things.
34:29SPEAKERAnd so the Blazer Eraser is kind of like a folly in a way,
34:33SPEAKERbut it was just like a problem,
34:34SPEAKERjust eminently worth solving.
34:38SPEAKERAnd maybe that's why Artus Shaulo was his name.
34:43SPEAKERHe worked so hard to actually make it happen.
34:46SPEAKER- There was a moment reading the sample chapter
34:48SPEAKERwhere I realized how much my brain
34:49SPEAKERhas been warped by computers,
34:51SPEAKERbecause I had to consciously remind myself at some point,
34:53SPEAKERwait, there was no backspace on these typewriters
34:55SPEAKER100 and something years ago, but even more,
34:59SPEAKERI think it was Underwood, you said,
35:01SPEAKERwhat was it, maybe around the turn of the century
35:02SPEAKERor something, like their big innovation
35:04SPEAKERwas that they let you see what you were typing
35:06SPEAKERas you typed it and like my brain exploded,
35:08SPEAKER'cause what was it like before that?
35:09SPEAKERLike, did you literally not,
35:11SPEAKERdid you have to like run the whole page
35:12SPEAKERand then pull it out to see what you had written?
35:14SPEAKER- Yeah, you could kind of raise the platen, I think,
35:17SPEAKERor the roller a little bit to peek inside.
35:20SPEAKERAnd it was this sort of beautiful moment.
35:22SPEAKERI think we still have some letters
35:25SPEAKERfrom the inventor of the typewriter,
35:28SPEAKERtype written to his friends and not too many, unfortunately,
35:33SPEAKERbut there's this one where they're still working
35:35SPEAKERon the first typewriter.
35:37SPEAKERAnd he was just like, oh, I just, something went wrong
35:40SPEAKERand I typed the whole page and I lost it.
35:43SPEAKERAnd it's very similar to like early home computers
35:46SPEAKERwhere you forgot to save or a power crash or a floppy,
35:50SPEAKERyou put a magnet on your floppy or whatever,
35:53SPEAKERbut he's still like, I love this machine.
35:55SPEAKERLike he was so into his invention.
35:57SPEAKERIt's like, oh, no big deal, I just re-typed it.
36:01SPEAKERSo it was really funny.
36:02SPEAKER- Oh, that's really funny.
36:05SPEAKERSo, I mean, okay, there's a bunch of different ways
36:07SPEAKERwe could go from here.
36:08SPEAKERI was just gonna say after,
36:09SPEAKERso one of the things that as this,
36:10SPEAKERso Andy, a mutual friend of ours, Andy Bio,
36:15SPEAKERposted your first tweet when you said,
36:18SPEAKERlet's see, a couple of years ago, you said,
36:20SPEAKERI think this was in 2015, you said,
36:23SPEAKERkind of feeling I should write a book
36:24SPEAKERabout the history and stories of computer
36:27SPEAKERand typewriter keyboards, dot, dot, dot.
36:29SPEAKERAnd so that was in August of 2015.
36:33SPEAKERSo you've been at this for seven and a half years,
36:34SPEAKERbasically at this point.
36:36SPEAKERAnd it's taken you all over the world.
36:38SPEAKERI've watched you on Twitter, pop up in computer museums
36:42SPEAKERand typewriter museums around Europe and North America
36:44SPEAKERand everywhere.
36:45SPEAKERAnd I'm curious if like, A, kind of what would have been
36:49SPEAKERthe big, what are the things that gave you the most joy
36:52SPEAKERout of that experience?
36:54SPEAKERAnd then also you've been sharing this on Twitter as you go.
36:57SPEAKERAnd I kind of wonder if you've become the guy on Twitter
36:59SPEAKERfor keyboard stuff now,
37:00SPEAKERwhere people just send you random keyboard info.
37:04SPEAKERAnd if you expect, I expect that'll probably accelerate
37:06SPEAKERnow that the book is coming out as well, so.
37:09SPEAKER- Yeah, I think definitely on the second question, yes.
37:12SPEAKERI am the keyboard guy.
37:13SPEAKERI mean, fortunately there are like more keyboard people.
37:16SPEAKERThey're like mechanical keyboard,
37:18SPEAKERsort of YouTube celebrities.
37:21SPEAKERSo there's like, you know, we can share this space,
37:23SPEAKERI suppose.
37:24SPEAKERBut yes, and I really enjoy it because like I think,
37:28SPEAKERyou know, in 2015, by the way,
37:33SPEAKERI actually don't remember writing the tweets.
37:34SPEAKERSo that's really funny that Andy unearthed it
37:36SPEAKERbecause I was like, wow, okay.
37:38SPEAKERI guess I thought it was a little bit later than that,
37:41SPEAKERbut maybe like good ideas came coming back
37:43SPEAKERand eventually just like, you know, didn't leave.
37:45SPEAKERBut like, I had this idea that the keyboards
37:48SPEAKERare kind of like a fractal, right?
37:50SPEAKERLike you will never run out of stories.
37:52SPEAKERYou will never run out.
37:53SPEAKERYou can just go deeper or connect things laterally
37:55SPEAKERor try different things.
37:56SPEAKERSo, and it ended up being the case.
37:58SPEAKERAnd I think that's like,
37:59SPEAKERI wish I had an answer of how I knew that,
38:02SPEAKERbut I think that's,
38:06SPEAKERI like this idea that like,
38:07SPEAKERif you recognize that something is a fractal
38:10SPEAKERand you can pursue it,
38:11SPEAKERthat could be like one of the most amazing things,
38:13SPEAKERat least for me, like a kind of a creative/careers person.
38:18SPEAKERMaybe I lagged into this one this time,
38:20SPEAKERbut yeah, so I think you're asking about like moments.
38:24SPEAKERI think, you know, many, very, very many,
38:28SPEAKERlike there were some, you know, moments of like,
38:34SPEAKERon the personal side, you know, learning, for example,
38:37SPEAKERon this tweet, I was just looking at it.
38:39SPEAKERThere's four pictures.
38:42SPEAKERAnd when I was sending it,
38:44SPEAKERI was just like, oh, there are cool pictures of four keyboards
38:47SPEAKERand now like asking me about any of them.
38:49SPEAKERI can talk for half an hour, right?
38:51SPEAKER- Yeah, I was gonna say, one has an execute button.
38:53SPEAKEROne is, I think, is it an Olivetti
38:55SPEAKERor is it just a keyboard that has plunger keys?
38:58SPEAKERAnd then I don't know what the old typewriter is.
39:01SPEAKERAnd I don't know what the one in the top,
39:02SPEAKERthe top right has like a weird iron cross symbol on it
39:05SPEAKERfor whatever reason it looks like.
39:06SPEAKER- Yeah, I think it's a teletype.
39:08SPEAKERI think it's a German teletype
39:09SPEAKERbecause in Europe, you use symbols much more than words.
39:13SPEAKERThat's why, you know, the execute one is American
39:16SPEAKERbecause America loves words for some reason.
39:18SPEAKERIf you drive a car, you just,
39:20SPEAKERthere's a lot of reading involved, but no, no, no.
39:23SPEAKERBut so there's, you know, this is like professional,
39:25SPEAKERit's kind of nice to learn those things
39:27SPEAKERand connect them in different ways, right?
39:30SPEAKERBut I think that the number one thing
39:33SPEAKERwas just like how amazing people have been
39:36SPEAKERin this process for me.
39:38SPEAKERLike both people in like just helping out.
39:43SPEAKERMy original desire to write a book came from,
39:48SPEAKERI think my mom being a librarian
39:50SPEAKERand just my whole childhood being surrounded by books
39:54SPEAKERand just sort of having this idea that like books
39:56SPEAKERare maybe among the most noble things you could do.
40:01SPEAKERAs an idea, I'm kind of wanting, you know,
40:03SPEAKERreally admiring writers in my life
40:05SPEAKERand wanting to do something like this.
40:08SPEAKERAnd it turns out that's not just me.
40:13SPEAKERLike if you talk to somebody and say like,
40:15SPEAKERhey, I'm working on this book about this thing.
40:19SPEAKERIt was amazing to me how often people were just like,
40:21SPEAKERyes, come right in.
40:22SPEAKERLike, I don't even care about what you're doing.
40:25SPEAKERLike sure, keyboards, whatever, but like I'll help out.
40:29SPEAKERYou know, there was like so many stories
40:32SPEAKERof that kind of stuff.
40:33SPEAKERAnd then, you know, the sort of different,
40:36SPEAKERfinding like different versions of myself.
40:38SPEAKERIt's like people who care about keyboards
40:40SPEAKERin some way or the other.
40:41SPEAKERAnd you know, one of the things
40:43SPEAKERthat people might recognize me from
40:45SPEAKERwas when I sort of stumbled upon a typewriter museum
40:49SPEAKERin Catalonia, in Spain, that I was just on vacation.
40:53SPEAKERI already knew that I wanted to write this book
40:55SPEAKERor it was sort of close to that realization.
40:57SPEAKERAnd so I researched this where I was going
41:02SPEAKERand I didn't find anything.
41:03SPEAKERAnd I literally just like found a sign on the street
41:06SPEAKERthat said technical museum.
41:08SPEAKERAnd I was just like, oh, that sounds kind of cool.
41:09SPEAKERI'm just gonna walk.
41:10SPEAKERI'm gonna find it.
41:11SPEAKERI'm gonna walk for like 10 minutes.
41:12SPEAKERAnd then ended up being this,
41:14SPEAKERone of the most impressive typewriter collections
41:16SPEAKERin the world.
41:19SPEAKERIt was just there.
41:21SPEAKERLike I could have missed it like so easily.
41:24SPEAKERAnd I walked in and I was just amazed.
41:26SPEAKERThere was just like rooms and rooms of typewriters there.
41:32SPEAKERAnd I eventually ended up getting to know
41:35SPEAKERthe people who run the museum.
41:36SPEAKERWe were just chatting last week.
41:40SPEAKERAnd it's kind of interesting
41:42SPEAKERbecause I'm not a typewriter collector, right?
41:45SPEAKERThis is not like sort of my version of that,
41:47SPEAKERbut just being able to see,
41:50SPEAKERthey collected all the first seven editions of Underwood
41:54SPEAKERor all the first seven.
41:55SPEAKERAnd it's something kind of like,
41:56SPEAKERoh, now I can look at that and do something different
42:00SPEAKERfrom starting from that collection or from that passion.
42:03SPEAKERAnd so there's so many stories
42:05SPEAKERof just like connections with people
42:06SPEAKERthat were just extraordinary and kept me going, honestly.
42:10SPEAKER- Well, I mean, having a collection like that
42:12SPEAKERwhere everything's lined up and you see the generations
42:14SPEAKERalso has to be really useful
42:16SPEAKERfor looking and seeing what was design
42:18SPEAKERand what was evolution and like, yeah.
42:21SPEAKER- Yeah, and it's a certain kind of obsessiveness, right?
42:23SPEAKERAnd it's like, it's interesting too.
42:25SPEAKERLike I think I'm obsessive in some ways too.
42:27SPEAKERI mean, the book's like 1200 pages, right?
42:30SPEAKERIt's like, it's a little extreme
42:32SPEAKERand maybe people should be worried about me in some way.
42:34SPEAKERBut they told me like, we just needed to have
42:41SPEAKERthis seven first editions of this typewriter
42:44SPEAKER'cause that's just how we do this.
42:47SPEAKERWe need to complete the set.
42:49SPEAKERBut then you're right, it becomes like a case study, right?
42:52SPEAKERIt becomes like, oh, they added this key
42:53SPEAKERin edition number three and I'm curious why,
42:55SPEAKERor they try this thing in this just this one model
42:58SPEAKERand they abandon it.
42:59SPEAKERAnd those I find are like really interesting,
43:01SPEAKERthose sort of nooks and crannies, this abandoned inventions.
43:04SPEAKERIt's easy to see the beauty and curse of QWERTY,
43:07SPEAKERyou could take the guy who invented QWERTY,
43:09SPEAKERsit them down to your keyboard
43:11SPEAKERand they would know what to do
43:12SPEAKER'cause it actually didn't change that much.
43:14SPEAKERBut of course there were all of the shift wars
43:16SPEAKERand all of these other things that happened,
43:19SPEAKERall of this wild inventions that didn't make it.
43:21SPEAKERAnd I think in some of those inventions are,
43:23SPEAKERthose are the most interesting stories.
43:26SPEAKER- You talk about the openness
43:29SPEAKERwith which people invited you in
43:30SPEAKERand showed you their exotic hardware and stuff.
43:32SPEAKERI mean, that's kind of the thing about people
43:33SPEAKERthat are very passionate or obsessive about something.
43:35SPEAKERIt's like the ultimate expression of that
43:37SPEAKERis sharing it with somebody else, with showing it off.
43:40SPEAKERI'm curious when you talk about traveling,
43:42SPEAKERgoing to museums and stuff,
43:43SPEAKERlike how just from a life standpoint, how consuming,
43:46SPEAKERhow all consuming is writing a book like this for this long?
43:49SPEAKERI mean, were you working a day job the whole time
43:52SPEAKERor did this completely take over your life?
43:54SPEAKER- Yeah, so not quite.
43:59SPEAKERI took, I think about a year of work to do this full-time.
44:04SPEAKERThat was particularly the writing part
44:06SPEAKERbecause I knew for that you need focus,
44:08SPEAKERyou need sort of uninterrupted time for your brain to work,
44:12SPEAKERwhether you're typing or in the shower
44:14SPEAKERor all this kind of stuff,
44:15SPEAKERbecause I think that's the way it goes, right?
44:19SPEAKERBut I think a lot of the other things
44:20SPEAKERare sort of chunkable, a lot more.
44:23SPEAKERI can jump into Photoshop to fix a photo in the evening
44:27SPEAKERwhile watching TV, which actually became,
44:30SPEAKERit's like maybe more hours than writing,
44:32SPEAKERbut that's not as time consuming.
44:34SPEAKERSo yeah, so this was, it was in a way
44:37SPEAKERlike seven and a half years or however many
44:40SPEAKERbecause it wasn't a full-time project,
44:44SPEAKERbut also maybe it kind of had to be seven and a half years
44:47SPEAKERbecause like there was a lot of figuring stuff out.
44:52SPEAKERLike I've never written a book before
44:56SPEAKERand I've never published a book before,
44:57SPEAKERwhich that ended up being like its own set
45:00SPEAKERof really interesting challenges with logistics,
45:04SPEAKERpaper sourcing, printing,
45:05SPEAKERlike the Kickstarter itself is a project, right?
45:08SPEAKERLike for whatever project you have,
45:10SPEAKERKickstarter becomes like a second project
45:13SPEAKERand marketing, newsletter,
45:16SPEAKERlike it just happened that I ended up
45:19SPEAKERliking doing a lot of those things.
45:21SPEAKERThe newsletter became like almost its own thing
45:23SPEAKERthat I'm very proud of in a way that I'm now thinking about
45:27SPEAKERadding a third volume with like
45:29SPEAKERsome making of newsletter stories,
45:31SPEAKERbecause they actually ended up being like very personal
45:33SPEAKERand important to me, but...
45:37SPEAKER- You're muted, Marcin.
45:38SPEAKER- Oh, sorry.
45:40SPEAKERI graced the space bar with my fingers,
45:42SPEAKERwhich feels very appropriate.
45:44SPEAKER- Board failure, it seems appropriate.
45:47SPEAKER- Oh boy, do I have stories for you,
45:49SPEAKERbut there's a chapter about that.
45:52SPEAKERBut so part of the book was honestly
46:00SPEAKERsetting this condition for myself that I,
46:02SPEAKERthis is gonna be hell, this is gonna be a lot of effort.
46:05SPEAKERThis is gonna be hard at multiple times.
46:09SPEAKERSo I need to like put in an effort to like
46:11SPEAKERenjoy it deliberately, to create like little side journeys
46:14SPEAKERif I get tired or exhausted, to have like...
46:19SPEAKERThere was one moment where I just hated the book
46:22SPEAKERand there were many moments like this.
46:24SPEAKERAnd I thought like, I just wanna give a talk about keyboards
46:26SPEAKERbecause I like giving talks and it's gonna kind of reset me.
46:29SPEAKERAnd so sort of negotiating that,
46:32SPEAKERthat's why I think it took like longer,
46:34SPEAKERbut I think that as I mentioned,
46:36SPEAKERlike I think maybe just that was the only option, right?
46:40SPEAKERTo just sort of like have this.
46:42SPEAKERAnd not even talking about just like my,
46:48SPEAKERI'm slow to kind of maybe experiment and warm up to things.
46:53SPEAKERSo for example, the idea that like I would self publish it,
46:55SPEAKERwhich wasn't the original goal.
46:57SPEAKERThere was no goal, it was like finding an agent
46:59SPEAKERand doing like a classic like airport trade book,
47:03SPEAKERwhich this book is really far away from now.
47:06SPEAKER- I was gonna say, I think it would look a little different
47:09SPEAKERif you've done that, yeah.
47:10SPEAKER- But that took me like a year to...
47:13SPEAKERBecause I originally thought like,
47:15SPEAKERoh, self-publishing is for losers.
47:17SPEAKERLike honestly, I don't think that now.
47:19SPEAKERI do have some beautiful self-published books
47:22SPEAKERthat were just really like setting a score.
47:25SPEAKERI'm just like, I wanna tell my story.
47:26SPEAKERLike I wanna preserve my legacy
47:30SPEAKERbefore I go like over human emotions, right?
47:33SPEAKERBut they didn't feel very attractive.
47:35SPEAKERBut in the process of like talking to people,
47:37SPEAKERI learned like, no, like actually self-publishing
47:39SPEAKERis like how you make it yours and how you can...
47:43SPEAKERIt's gonna be much harder
47:45SPEAKER'cause now you own all of these other things
47:47SPEAKERon top of writing.
47:49SPEAKERYou can just like send the word doc to somebody
47:51SPEAKERand just like wait for a year.
47:53SPEAKERBut that ended by being important to me.
47:57SPEAKERBut it took me a while to sort of just go through
48:00SPEAKERlike all of the steps.
48:01SPEAKERLike, oh, there has to be a Kickstarter now
48:02SPEAKERand I have to make a video.
48:03SPEAKERI don't know how to make videos.
48:07SPEAKERAnd the stress of like now, it's funny,
48:10SPEAKERbut the campaign is doing really well
48:12SPEAKERand I'm really, really happy about it.
48:14SPEAKERBut like three days ago, I had no idea, right?
48:18SPEAKERSo there was this extra sort of always
48:19SPEAKERlike this sort of background stress level
48:21SPEAKERof like what if after seven years people say,
48:23SPEAKER"Yeah, I don't know, I guess I don't need that."
48:26SPEAKER- There's always a moment
48:27SPEAKERbefore you put your work out in the world
48:28SPEAKERwhere you're like, I don't know if anybody cares
48:29SPEAKERabout this, I've spent...
48:30SPEAKERAnd I've never spent seven years working on something.
48:32SPEAKERI can't even imagine the added stress of that.
48:35SPEAKERI was gonna ask if you still enjoy keyboards
48:37SPEAKERafter working on this song,
48:39SPEAKERbut I think it's pretty obvious that you do.
48:41SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, it's funny because like there's...
48:45SPEAKERI don't know what's gonna happen next, right?
48:47SPEAKERLike I might get tired of this
48:50SPEAKERand move on to 'cause I'm a complete different.
48:52SPEAKERI might always remain a keyboard guy, I don't know.
48:56SPEAKERLike I'm leaving this sort of open, you know,
49:00SPEAKERon the Kickstarter page,
49:01SPEAKERI'm actually very deliberate to say like,
49:02SPEAKERhey, I think this might be the only edition of the book.
49:05SPEAKERLike, don't wait for like a soft cover copy
49:09SPEAKERor some, you know, or a TV show or whatever.
49:11SPEAKERJust like, because maybe, but I don't know.
49:15SPEAKERI don't wanna like...
49:15SPEAKER- Netflix documentary series or something?
49:17SPEAKERI don't know.
49:17SPEAKER- Yeah, I'd watch the documentary
49:18SPEAKERabout Marcin's journey to make the book.
49:20SPEAKERThat sounds pretty entertaining to me, but.
49:22SPEAKER- I mean, there's some really interesting people
49:24SPEAKERthat you would meet along the way that I met.
49:27SPEAKERSo I think that could be really,
49:29SPEAKERthat could be really funny if anybody's listening.
49:32SPEAKERBut no, I mean, honestly, like there's still,
49:35SPEAKERyou know, there's still like half a year of putting,
49:39SPEAKERyou know, printing it and all that kind of stuff.
49:41SPEAKERSo that's my next goal is basically
49:43SPEAKERjust like making sure this happens.
49:44SPEAKERLike we've done a lot of preparations,
49:47SPEAKERincluding, you know, the booklet and test print.
49:49SPEAKERWe have a printer lineup,
49:50SPEAKERbut that's still gonna be a lot of work, right?
49:53SPEAKERSo that's kind of on the horizon for me.
49:56SPEAKER- This is a little bit of a swerve back to process stuff,
49:59SPEAKERbut I've got like 8,000 questions.
50:00SPEAKERSo I apologize.
50:02SPEAKERThere's a lot of kind of lovingly photographed images
50:06SPEAKERof keyboards in the book.
50:08SPEAKERAnd I'm curious,
50:09SPEAKERlike when you're going out to museums
50:10SPEAKERand private collections,
50:12SPEAKERhow much care did you have to take handling
50:13SPEAKERa lot of that old hardware?
50:14SPEAKERLike, did you have to wear gloves for certain stuff
50:17SPEAKERor can some stuff like not be moved around too much?
50:19SPEAKERIs it like fragile or is this all pretty like sturdy
50:22SPEAKERmechanical stuff?
50:22SPEAKERI'm just curious about like touching all the stuff
50:25SPEAKERand working with it.
50:26SPEAKER- Yeah, that's a great question.
50:27SPEAKERI actually, you know, I used to be a volunteer
50:30SPEAKERat the Computer History Museum,
50:31SPEAKERwhich is a great organization in Silicon Valley.
50:33SPEAKERAnd I learned some of that there,
50:36SPEAKERincluding, you know, like that your sweat is acidic,
50:39SPEAKERyou know, and also like,
50:41SPEAKERwe don't know anything about plastics really still.
50:43SPEAKERSo, you know, are they gonna survive?
50:46SPEAKERYou know, who knows?
50:48SPEAKERBut no, the funny thing about keyboards
50:50SPEAKERis that like they're mostly not with some exceptions of,
50:53SPEAKERyou know, like important keyboards from, you know,
50:56SPEAKERcelebrities or early artifacts.
50:59SPEAKERLike they're not like precious in a way,
51:02SPEAKERthey were like mass manufactured.
51:03SPEAKERThere's a lot of just, you know, keyboards lying around.
51:07SPEAKERLike actually a lot of, you know,
51:09SPEAKERI ended up with a keyboard collection of my own
51:11SPEAKERand a lot of it was just like cheap purchases from eBay.
51:14SPEAKERKeyboards, nobody cares about it,
51:15SPEAKERbut I knew they were like somewhat significant,
51:18SPEAKERat least for me.
51:19SPEAKERSo there wasn't that much really about that
51:26SPEAKERwith the exception, which I found really funny.
51:29SPEAKERSo in my book, I promised myself,
51:32SPEAKERlike I took the photographic
51:35SPEAKERor the visual side incredibly seriously,
51:37SPEAKERmaybe coming from me being a designer.
51:39SPEAKERAnd I really wanted this book to be text and photos.
51:43SPEAKERLike in that order,
51:44SPEAKERbecause I think if you just like rip away all the photos,
51:48SPEAKERthe book still stands, right?
51:49SPEAKERYou can still enjoy it, but it would be a shame, right?
51:51SPEAKERAnd I think it was important for me for photos
51:53SPEAKERto like also participate in telling the story
51:55SPEAKERand being interleaved with the book
51:58SPEAKERrather than, you know, sort of in a little snippet
52:01SPEAKERsomewhere in the middle, you know, on a different paper.
52:04SPEAKERAnd so one of the goals and the rules for me
52:06SPEAKERwas I show objects.
52:08SPEAKERI don't show pattern drawings.
52:10SPEAKERI don't show like, I don't know,
52:12SPEAKERwhat will be the other source code.
52:15SPEAKERI show objects, right?
52:16SPEAKERLike it's important for me.
52:17SPEAKERAnd it could be like either, you know,
52:19SPEAKERphotos of these objects or, you know,
52:21SPEAKERhistoric photos of these objects being used,
52:23SPEAKERlike, you know, people typing in a 40s or 50s or whatnot.
52:26SPEAKERAnd there was this one object that was the very early
52:30SPEAKERprototype of the typewriter
52:31SPEAKERwhere it's literally just one key,
52:34SPEAKERone type of bar with a letter W
52:36SPEAKERwith a key actually repurposed from the Morse keyer.
52:40SPEAKERAnd there was the first like, sort of like,
52:42SPEAKERoh, this could work like this and it could have a letter
52:44SPEAKERand it will swing toward the paper.
52:46SPEAKERThe one exists, it's in a museum in America somewhere.
52:53SPEAKERAnd that museum was, I'm not going to name them,
52:56SPEAKERbut they were kind of like, oh, you're self-publishing this?
52:58SPEAKERWell, sorry, we don't talk to people who do that.
53:01SPEAKERWhich was in a way I understand it a little bit sad
53:05SPEAKERand I tried to convince them like,
53:06SPEAKERhey, I'm kind of serious about this.
53:08SPEAKERI'm not like some sort of five by night operation.
53:11SPEAKERWhat I ended up doing is I hired a person
53:13SPEAKERwho would do like a 3D render of their photos
53:17SPEAKERthat looked exactly the same
53:19SPEAKERand I could actually control the angles and stuff.
53:21SPEAKERBut in a book, so there's a 3D render of this object
53:25SPEAKERthat exists and it looks exactly the same.
53:27SPEAKERAnd I confess to it being a render,
53:30SPEAKERbut it's the one that I just couldn't get near
53:32SPEAKERand they wouldn't allow me to even put their photos
53:36SPEAKERin the book, which, you know.
53:39SPEAKERSo I think there was this one moment
53:41SPEAKERwhere there was no amount of like white gloves
53:44SPEAKERthat could help me.
53:45SPEAKERI just, but you know, it was really fun to like collaborate
53:48SPEAKERwith this 3D modeler and say like,
53:50SPEAKERhey, we're going to do this thing.
53:52SPEAKERYeah.
53:53SPEAKER- Were there moments that you were handling something
53:55SPEAKERthat you were like, I can't believe I'm touching
53:56SPEAKERthis particular keyboard, this particular typewriter?
53:59SPEAKER- There was actually this museum in Spain
54:03SPEAKERwhere I was walking around and I knew enough
54:08SPEAKERthat I recognized, hey, I think this is the short zone
54:11SPEAKERof gluten.
54:12SPEAKERLike, I think this is the first typewriter.
54:15SPEAKERAnd I like, because it had a label saying, don't touch.
54:20SPEAKERAnd I like very gingerly take the finger
54:22SPEAKERand press the Q key.
54:24SPEAKERAnd I was like, yes, I'm doing this.
54:26SPEAKERI just like, just ever so slightly wanted to do this.
54:29SPEAKERNo, it was fun.
54:31SPEAKERAnd yeah, and, you know, there were, you know,
54:36SPEAKERthere were like a lot of keyboards that I got to play with,
54:38SPEAKERlike, you know, the data hand, the space cut.
54:42SPEAKERAnd you know, some of the, actually,
54:44SPEAKERlike some of them were restored or like one of the funniest
54:47SPEAKERmoments that happened to me.
54:50SPEAKERSo I learned that, and maybe that happens to everybody
54:54SPEAKERwho was a historian, that like for every keyboard
54:58SPEAKERthat you think, you know, from, you know,
55:01SPEAKERhearing about it, like the first quality keyboard,
55:02SPEAKERthe model M, you know, space cadet, the iPhone keyboard,
55:07SPEAKERlike what are the like most known keyboards, right?
55:09SPEAKERThat's probably like a few more.
55:11SPEAKERDvorak, you know, they're much more complicated
55:14SPEAKERthan we think.
55:15SPEAKERAnd then they're much more, there's much more nuance.
55:20SPEAKERAnd so there's always this conversation about like,
55:22SPEAKERwhat is the worst keyboard ever made?
55:25SPEAKERAnd some people say, what would be the contenders, right?
55:28SPEAKERLike, I'm sorry.
55:30SPEAKER- IBM PC junior is up there, the Mac butterfly keys keyboard
55:35SPEAKERof the last few years is one of my least favorites.
55:38SPEAKERI don't know.
55:38SPEAKER- Yeah, there was Brad, what would be your contenders?
55:42SPEAKERYour worst keyboard.
55:43SPEAKER- Gosh, I don't know that I've used a keyboard
55:46SPEAKERthat I absolutely hated.
55:49SPEAKERI only use products that are amazing.
55:50SPEAKERI don't know.
55:51SPEAKER- Okay.
55:52SPEAKER- Honestly, like, I mean, every keyboard I've ever used,
55:55SPEAKERI think was at least like good enough.
55:56SPEAKERLike I was using in the early 2000s,
55:59SPEAKERI was just using this like very generic Dell USB keyboard
56:03SPEAKERfor a long time.
56:04SPEAKERI bought like three of them for 10 bucks a piece on eBay,
56:07SPEAKERjust to have spare keywords and like it was mushy
56:10SPEAKERand not amazing, but even that kind of got the job done.
56:12SPEAKERI don't know.
56:13SPEAKER- Yeah, so some people would actually name that, right?
56:16SPEAKERIt's like rubber dome keyboards from the nineties,
56:18SPEAKERyou know, anything, or, you know,
56:20SPEAKERthe Atari 400 is one of them, ZX Spectrum is one of them,
56:24SPEAKERthe incredibly influential,
56:26SPEAKERbut strange keyboard from the UK.
56:28SPEAKERBut no, you're right, like PC general is like right up there
56:31SPEAKERand I actually collaborated with somebody,
56:35SPEAKERJacob Alexander, who's like a member
56:37SPEAKERof this mechanical keyboard community
56:39SPEAKERand he helped me or he did most of the job.
56:43SPEAKERWe reverse engineered the signals coming from it
56:46SPEAKERand built like a USB converter.
56:49SPEAKERSo I could get to type on it.
56:53SPEAKERAnd, you know, so I don't know if that's like method acting
56:57SPEAKERor whatever, you know, but it was important for me,
57:00SPEAKERlike I took to actually type and actually the funny part
57:02SPEAKERabout the book is like the multiple parts written
57:04SPEAKERon various keyboards.
57:06SPEAKERThere's the part about where the keyboard was made
57:09SPEAKERwas written where the keyboard was made in Milwaukee,
57:12SPEAKERin the parking lot, you know,
57:14SPEAKERI wrote the PC junior chapter on the PC junior keyboard.
57:19SPEAKERAnd so that was sort of like a fun way to, you know,
57:21SPEAKERthey're not rare, you know,
57:22SPEAKERyou can get them on eBay any day,
57:24SPEAKERbut or typing on a Selectric,
57:27SPEAKERwhich that ended up being the sort of like pivotal keyboard
57:29SPEAKERin a history that I didn't actually use before.
57:32SPEAKERThose were like, it was important for me to like use them
57:36SPEAKERfor a while, right?
57:37SPEAKERAnd kind of get a sense of how they actually are.
57:39SPEAKERAnd there were moments that surprised me,
57:41SPEAKERincluding that the PC generous like, yeah, okay, it is bad.
57:44SPEAKERIt's really bad to type on, but the story that surrounds it,
57:47SPEAKERlike saying the story with the spectrum,
57:49SPEAKERthey're interesting, right?
57:50SPEAKERAnd it's much more complicated than just like,
57:53SPEAKERthey want it to cheapen out, right?
57:56SPEAKER- Well, and I mean, so you brought to a conference
57:59SPEAKERwe were at a few years ago, you brought a whole giant sack
58:03SPEAKERof keyboards, you know, a PC junior,
58:05SPEAKERI think there was a model M,
58:07SPEAKERthere was some weird ergo keyboards,
58:09SPEAKERyou kind of tuck your fingers in,
58:10SPEAKERthen just move the tips of your fingers
58:12SPEAKERin the general direction of the key.
58:15SPEAKERAnd it was fascinating to get to use a lot of these,
58:18SPEAKER'cause I'd never used a PC junior keyboard.
58:21SPEAKERIt was really interesting to get to actually try them
58:25SPEAKERfor the first time.
58:26SPEAKERBut like, it's funny you mentioned this electric,
58:29SPEAKER'cause I'm old enough that my first office job
58:32SPEAKERwas in an office where we had a Wang microcomputer
58:34SPEAKERthat was like a shared terminal thing
58:36SPEAKERwith four different terminals
58:38SPEAKERand like a really nice clacky mechanical keyboard.
58:42SPEAKERAnd then we also had like the large number of the staff
58:47SPEAKERworked on these IBM Selectrics
58:48SPEAKERthat were the ones with the memory dials.
58:49SPEAKERSo you'd write in the form letter,
58:52SPEAKERyou record it to a space on the dial,
58:55SPEAKERwhich I assume was some sort of like early digital prom
58:59SPEAKERor something that they were writing to, I don't even know.
59:01SPEAKERAnd then they could hit a button,
59:03SPEAKERturn the dial, hit the button,
59:04SPEAKERand it would just type the whole letter
59:05SPEAKERfor them really quick on the IBM Selectric.
59:07SPEAKER- Yeah, do you wanna know what the dial was for?
59:10SPEAKER- Yeah, I would love to know.
59:11SPEAKER- I think if I think of the one,
59:14SPEAKERso Selectric was really interesting
59:15SPEAKERbecause there was basically this sort of 30 or 40 years
59:19SPEAKERof Selectric evolving and it all happened before computers.
59:22SPEAKERSo that's why we sort of kind of don't care today
59:24SPEAKER'cause we just sort of cut off that time.
59:28SPEAKERAnd it was all in this sort of penumbra
59:31SPEAKERbetween typewriters and computers, right?
59:33SPEAKERWhich is actually like a very fascinating space.
59:35SPEAKERThere's word processors that used to be computers,
59:39SPEAKERthere's teletypes, there's key punches,
59:41SPEAKERthere's different kind of calculators,
59:44SPEAKERall of this sort of space.
59:46SPEAKERComputers weren't just like a typewriter with a screen.
59:48SPEAKERIt was just like a complicated,
59:50SPEAKERI spent like chapters trying to untangle this.
59:52SPEAKERAnd I think it's a pretty cool and interesting story,
59:55SPEAKERbut Selectric was, they were trying to do like a lot
59:59SPEAKERof things, one just being a really good typewriter,
1:00:01SPEAKERbut one being a computer IO.
1:00:04SPEAKERThey had a Selectric with like extra plugs
1:00:07SPEAKERthat you could actually use
1:00:08SPEAKERas a very cheap at a time terminal.
1:00:11SPEAKERAnd I think the one you're referring to
1:00:13SPEAKERwas actually a typesetting Selectric.
1:00:14SPEAKERSo the challenge with doing like a justification of text
1:00:18SPEAKERand the right alignment of text is that you kind of have
1:00:23SPEAKERto know how many spaces you need to allocate.
1:00:26SPEAKERAnd particularly when, you know, with regular typewriters
1:00:28SPEAKERwhich are mono space, it's a little bit easier.
1:00:31SPEAKERBut even then you kind of have to type it in your head
1:00:33SPEAKERor without typing, count the spaces
1:00:36SPEAKERand then distribute them by hand.
1:00:39SPEAKERThat becomes even harder with some Selectrics
1:00:42SPEAKERthat had semi-proportional typefaces.
1:00:44SPEAKERSo you could actually, there were like three or four,
1:00:46SPEAKERyou know, notches.
1:00:48SPEAKERSo W was why they're-
1:00:49SPEAKER- Two different widths for the letters
1:00:50SPEAKERis what you're talking about. - Yeah.
1:00:51SPEAKERIt wasn't as fine tuned as, you know,
1:00:53SPEAKERlike actual typesetting, but it was good enough
1:00:56SPEAKERfor books and for other things.
1:00:57SPEAKERAnd so I think the dial was to help you calculate
1:01:00SPEAKERall of the spacing as you were typing
1:01:03SPEAKERand distribute it because that like sort of like,
1:01:06SPEAKERlike we talked about backspacing before, right?
1:01:08SPEAKERThere's also like this other manual steps
1:01:10SPEAKERthat we don't appreciate today
1:01:11SPEAKERbecause software does it all for us,
1:01:13SPEAKERwhich was just like, yeah, the distribution of spaces.
1:01:15SPEAKERSo it's like, you know, the left edge ends up
1:01:18SPEAKERexactly in the same space and the right edge,
1:01:21SPEAKERthat's the hard one, ends up in the same space.
1:01:23SPEAKER- Well, so the variable width ones
1:01:26SPEAKERI definitely used early on,
1:01:27SPEAKERbut this one used it as kind of a buffer.
1:01:30SPEAKERSo you could record a form letter into a space on the dial
1:01:33SPEAKERand then the machine would just automatically type it
1:01:35SPEAKERfor you once they- - I see, I see.
1:01:36SPEAKER- But there was only one person in the office
1:01:38SPEAKERthat could type cleanly enough to get the form letter
1:01:40SPEAKERrecorded perfectly on the first try.
1:01:42SPEAKERSo it was a, but it was a weird like pre-computer way
1:01:46SPEAKERof repeating content, which was fascinating.
1:01:49SPEAKER- Sort of like the mail merge slash word processing thing.
1:01:51SPEAKERYeah. - Kind of, yeah.
1:01:53SPEAKER- Yeah, so yeah, so if you're talking about that one,
1:01:55SPEAKERyeah, it's actually funny because the whole, you know,
1:01:58SPEAKERwe think about like word processor says software, right,
1:02:01SPEAKERtoday, like I guess we think of other things,
1:02:03SPEAKERbut word processors were not just early,
1:02:08SPEAKERlike I think the one you mentioned maybe was one of them,
1:02:10SPEAKERlike very early computers dedicated to typing, right,
1:02:14SPEAKERwith this early memory and the sort of repeat function.
1:02:17SPEAKERAnd I think it was like maybe a repeat with a pause,
1:02:20SPEAKERso it can like type somebody's name and then continue, right.
1:02:23SPEAKERBut they were like, this might have been electromechanical
1:02:28SPEAKERor even electronic, right, but even before that,
1:02:30SPEAKERthey were like very early word processors
1:02:32SPEAKERwere basically like player pianos.
1:02:34SPEAKERLike they were typewriters with holes
1:02:37SPEAKERand they look like this,
1:02:38SPEAKERliterally look like player pianos where, you know,
1:02:42SPEAKERthey would just like record keystrokes one at a time
1:02:44SPEAKERand replay them from this role with holes,
1:02:48SPEAKERwhich, you know, eventually led to punch cards maybe,
1:02:51SPEAKERnot led to, but connected to how punch cards were, right.
1:02:54SPEAKER- Paper tapes and punch cards and all that, right, yeah.
1:02:56SPEAKERSo yeah, there's sort of like word processing Selectric
1:02:58SPEAKERwas like yet another flavor of a Selectric
1:03:01SPEAKERthat I think that's maybe the one you saw,
1:03:03SPEAKERnot the one that I mentioned earlier, yeah.
1:03:05SPEAKER- There's a photo that I have to mention
1:03:07SPEAKERin the sample chapter you sent of a Japanese keyboard from,
1:03:11SPEAKERI don't think there's a date on it,
1:03:12SPEAKERbut it's a Kanji keyboard that has,
1:03:15SPEAKERI'm conservatively estimating like 500 plus keys on it.
1:03:19SPEAKERI don't even know where to start with.
1:03:21SPEAKERDid you get to try that?
1:03:22SPEAKERDoes it even work?
1:03:23SPEAKERI mean, I guess like encoding for other character sets
1:03:26SPEAKERbesides just kind of standard Roman characters or whatever,
1:03:28SPEAKERlike is a whole other topic of like,
1:03:31SPEAKERwould this keyboard even output like text encoding
1:03:34SPEAKERthat a modern computer could understand at this point?
1:03:35SPEAKERI don't know.
1:03:36SPEAKER- Yeah, so I think that's, you know, that's its whole,
1:03:39SPEAKERlike I actually, I have like multiple charters
1:03:41SPEAKERtalking about like scripts other than,
1:03:44SPEAKERyou know, English or Latin,
1:03:46SPEAKERbecause, you know, if you type in Greek,
1:03:51SPEAKERthat's easy because Greek has fewer letters than English,
1:03:54SPEAKERalthough you also maybe need English letters
1:03:56SPEAKERbecause that's what often happens to languages
1:03:59SPEAKERthat like you also need Latin in addition to what you need.
1:04:03SPEAKERSo everything becomes more complicated.
1:04:05SPEAKERThere's, and then you can go further and further, right?
1:04:09SPEAKERThere's Cyrillic, which is basically its own set
1:04:14SPEAKERthat's largely not interchangeable with Latin.
1:04:18SPEAKERThere's a lot of scripts that have accents.
1:04:21SPEAKERAnd, you know, the idea of a dead key, you know,
1:04:24SPEAKERto output the accent comes from typewriters.
1:04:25SPEAKERThe key was literally like disconnected from the mechanism.
1:04:28SPEAKERThat's why it was dead.
1:04:29SPEAKERBut then, you know, then you get something like pi,
1:04:33SPEAKERwhich is a lot more than 26 characters,
1:04:37SPEAKERbut there's no uppercase and lowercase.
1:04:41SPEAKERAnd then you enter spaces like Japanese,
1:04:45SPEAKERwhere Japanese has kana.
1:04:48SPEAKERThat's sort of similar, it's a syllabary, right?
1:04:50SPEAKERSyllables, not letters, but,
1:04:53SPEAKERand I'm sorry if I'm not using the language, correct.
1:04:55SPEAKERI'm not like an expert in this,
1:04:56SPEAKERbut you have hiragana and katakana,
1:04:59SPEAKERbut you also have kanji, right?
1:05:00SPEAKERWhich is like thousands or nobody knows how many.
1:05:04SPEAKER- Yeah, I think it's something like 2000 and change
1:05:06SPEAKERthat the government kind of defines as basic literacy.
1:05:11SPEAKER- And then you end up with Chinese,
1:05:12SPEAKERwhich like doesn't even have like the equivalent of kana.
1:05:14SPEAKERIt's just the big set of characters that they don't,
1:05:20SPEAKERand so, you know, today,
1:05:22SPEAKERthat's like the interesting part about QWERTY,
1:05:23SPEAKERthat today we, anything can be input via QWERTY, right?
1:05:29SPEAKERIt's just the IMEs, the operating systems help you
1:05:33SPEAKERwith auto-complete, with, you know, typing phonetically,
1:05:36SPEAKERtyping in some ways.
1:05:38SPEAKERLike I think many languages like Korean, Chinese, Japanese,
1:05:43SPEAKERThai have like many ways to convert English QWERTY
1:05:47SPEAKERto like the script that they need.
1:05:51SPEAKERAnd it's not auto-complete, it's predictive text now, right?
1:05:56SPEAKERSo it's sort of, there's a lot of software
1:05:59SPEAKERin a way to help you out.
1:06:01SPEAKERBut the keyboard you're referring to,
1:06:03SPEAKERI think it's from the '80s,
1:06:04SPEAKERand it's sort of only when the software started happening.
1:06:08SPEAKERAnd of course, that was a really interesting challenge of,
1:06:12SPEAKERyou know, not just how you encode all of this kanji
1:06:15SPEAKERor hanzi characters, but how do you input them, right?
1:06:18SPEAKERIf you don't have like software to,
1:06:21SPEAKERso there was a lot of really interesting developments there.
1:06:24SPEAKERLike the keyboard that you saw, for example,
1:06:26SPEAKERlike try to attack it.
1:06:28SPEAKERIt's almost like a late entrance to the shift wars,
1:06:30SPEAKERbecause if you look at it, it has 15 shifts.
1:06:33SPEAKERSo it's like your left hand is operating the shifts,
1:06:35SPEAKERyour right hand is like this matrix of 20 by 20, right?
1:06:39SPEAKERAnd each one has 15 legends.
1:06:41SPEAKERSo that's the shifts are mapping, right?
1:06:43SPEAKERAnd, you know, can you touch type on it?
1:06:45SPEAKERNo, but you can start learning much faster.
1:06:50SPEAKERBut in this sort of, you know,
1:06:53SPEAKERspace between typewriters, computers,
1:06:55SPEAKERthere was also this Chinese typewriter
1:06:57SPEAKERthat actually had what felt like this,
1:07:01SPEAKERlike not auto-complete, but like disambiguation.
1:07:04SPEAKERYou know how on Mac OS, if you hold letter E,
1:07:07SPEAKERyou get like this little call out,
1:07:08SPEAKERthat's like, do you want a regular E with this accent,
1:07:12SPEAKERE with an umlaut, you know,
1:07:14SPEAKERthe listeners at home, try it right now.
1:07:15SPEAKERIt's really fun, actually.
1:07:16SPEAKERJust hold any like A, E, O, U, any of those things.
1:07:21SPEAKERSame thing with an iPhone, right?
1:07:22SPEAKERYou hold a letter, you get like more accents.
1:07:24SPEAKERSo there was this Chinese inventor
1:07:26SPEAKERwho made a mechanical version of this.
1:07:30SPEAKERSo they had a keyboard that looked much closer.
1:07:35SPEAKERIt was a little bit bigger,
1:07:36SPEAKERbut sort of like within a QWERTY size,
1:07:39SPEAKERbut then you press a key
1:07:40SPEAKERand then you had this little window with eight options.
1:07:44SPEAKERMechanically, you would type another key to connect them.
1:07:50SPEAKERSo we'd have this inverse shift, right, in a way.
1:07:54SPEAKERAnd there was a way to be able to just like output
1:07:58SPEAKERthis many Chinese characters without sacrificing,
1:08:02SPEAKERwithout sort of like shoving them into this form,
1:08:05SPEAKERbecause that's what other people try to do.
1:08:07SPEAKERLike there were attempts to...
1:08:09SPEAKERI think you probably know like a segmented display is, right?
1:08:13SPEAKERLike the sort of LED kind of like pinball machine clock.
1:08:17SPEAKERSo there were people who try to do it for Chinese, right?
1:08:19SPEAKERSay like, "Oh, we're gonna like...
1:08:21SPEAKERChinese is too complicated."
1:08:22SPEAKERThey were all non-Chinese people mostly.
1:08:25SPEAKERAnd they were like, "We're just gonna simplify it
1:08:26SPEAKERso it looks like a kind of like a bunch of segments
1:08:28SPEAKERand you can just like choose the segments, right?"
1:08:30SPEAKERAnd not the best idea and kind of offensive in a way,
1:08:36SPEAKERbut this person was just like, "No, no, no.
1:08:37SPEAKERThere are gonna be like thousand or something characters.
1:08:40SPEAKERI'm just gonna come up with what we maybe now consider
1:08:45SPEAKERlike the first input device, not like the keyboard,
1:08:47SPEAKERbut like the first more complicated typing input."
1:08:51SPEAKERAgain, way before computers.
1:08:53SPEAKERAnd you see it over and over again,
1:08:54SPEAKERjust like this inventions.
1:08:55SPEAKERAnd like I mentioned before,
1:08:57SPEAKERlike they didn't really make it to market
1:09:00SPEAKERfor maybe unrelated reasons,
1:09:03SPEAKERbut it was kind of amazing that there were somebody
1:09:06SPEAKERwho wanted people in China to be able to type.
1:09:15SPEAKER- Let's fast forward a little bit, I guess.
1:09:18SPEAKERI feel like we should talk about modern keyboards for a bit
1:09:19SPEAKER'cause we've talked a lot about a bunch
1:09:21SPEAKERof really old keyboards.
1:09:22SPEAKERWere you a mechanical?
1:09:24SPEAKERWere you into the mechanical keyboard?
1:09:25SPEAKERLike when you started on this in 2015,
1:09:27SPEAKERthat was, I don't wanna say it was new at that point
1:09:29SPEAKER'cause people had been doing it for a long time.
1:09:30SPEAKERAnd I remember there was a booming market in model M's
1:09:32SPEAKERfor as long as I can remember.
1:09:34SPEAKERBut that was the moment when manufacturing got to the point
1:09:39SPEAKERthat you could readily manufacture a small run keyboard
1:09:44SPEAKERthat you'd sell 100 or 200 of.
1:09:47SPEAKERAnd that was a new thing, I feel like around that time.
1:09:50SPEAKERAnd I'm curious if you were into that
1:09:51SPEAKERor if that was something you were even aware of
1:09:53SPEAKERwhen you got started on this.
1:09:57SPEAKER- I wasn't into that.
1:09:58SPEAKERAnd I will confess, I'm still not into that as much.
1:10:01SPEAKERI mean, I have a mechanical keyboard.
1:10:03SPEAKERI think it's cool looking.
1:10:07SPEAKERI don't actually remember what switches it uses.
1:10:09SPEAKERSo maybe that tells you sort of like
1:10:10SPEAKERwhere I am on that sort of gradient.
1:10:12SPEAKERThe yellow, if that helps anybody.
1:10:14SPEAKERI'm sorry, it is not a bit.
1:10:15SPEAKERI actually keep forgetting what it is.
1:10:18SPEAKERBut so I definitely like met a lot of people
1:10:21SPEAKERwho are like really, really into keyboards, right?
1:10:23SPEAKERLike in a book, I have like,
1:10:27SPEAKERI talked to like at least two or three people
1:10:29SPEAKERwho are like really into switches,
1:10:31SPEAKERjust switches alone, right?
1:10:32SPEAKERBut so no, I wasn't like super aware,
1:10:40SPEAKERbut I think just discovering that space
1:10:47SPEAKERand starting to like understand
1:10:48SPEAKERlike what do mechanical keyboards mean to people?
1:10:51SPEAKERAnd again, this is the thing we talked about earlier,
1:10:52SPEAKERwhich is some people are really into
1:10:57SPEAKERthe kind of software side or DIY stuff, right?
1:11:01SPEAKEROr really nerd out on like the force curves
1:11:04SPEAKERof the switches, which at some point,
1:11:06SPEAKERlike it's too much for me,
1:11:09SPEAKERbut I think it's like really fun to watch
1:11:11SPEAKERlike people making websites,
1:11:12SPEAKERor even like I met this person who made this,
1:11:16SPEAKERhe has a better name for it.
1:11:17SPEAKERI think it's a force curve gauge.
1:11:19SPEAKERI call it like a mechanical finger.
1:11:21SPEAKERHe has this, like he built this device
1:11:23SPEAKERto just press a key very, very slowly
1:11:26SPEAKERand then record the output and see,
1:11:29SPEAKERwhere's the, when the contact happens
1:11:32SPEAKERor is it different on the way up and stuff like that.
1:11:34SPEAKERSo yeah, I went to like a bunch of keyboard meetups
1:11:40SPEAKERand met with a lot of people.
1:11:43SPEAKERAnd it's, yeah, it's been really interesting.
1:11:47SPEAKERAnd it seems still like it's growing, right?
1:11:51SPEAKERI don't know.
1:11:52SPEAKERIt's really, it's become really hard
1:11:53SPEAKERto even keep track of what's happening
1:11:55SPEAKERin the mechanical keyboard space to me.
1:11:58SPEAKER- I feel like as you see larger manufacturers
1:12:00SPEAKERgetting into that space,
1:12:01SPEAKERI feel like the Cherry Patents expiring opened things up
1:12:04SPEAKERa lot 'cause suddenly more people
1:12:06SPEAKERthan just Cherry could manufacture the switches.
1:12:09SPEAKERBut it feels like that space is getting bigger
1:12:11SPEAKERand bigger every year to the point that like,
1:12:14SPEAKERnow we're seeing laptops with like those micro,
1:12:16SPEAKERlow profile mechanical switches and the whole thing on them.
1:12:18SPEAKERIt's a little bonkers.
1:12:21SPEAKERThe thing that's most interesting to me about that space
1:12:23SPEAKERis kind of the mad science.
1:12:24SPEAKERThe people who are taking like two different switches
1:12:27SPEAKERand taking the bits that they like out of each one
1:12:29SPEAKERand then jamming them together.
1:12:31SPEAKERAnd yeah, it's been a lot of fun.
1:12:34SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:12:35SPEAKEROr sort of like resurrecting the old keyboards
1:12:37SPEAKERin some conceptual way.
1:12:38SPEAKERLike I'm gonna take the old Mac keyboard,
1:12:40SPEAKERbut like put it in a modern enclosure, right?
1:12:43SPEAKEROr even like unwillingly sort of recreated
1:12:46SPEAKERsome of the typewriter work from decades ago,
1:12:50SPEAKERbecause a lot of those ideas are kind of never end,
1:12:53SPEAKERthey come and go, right?
1:12:54SPEAKERLike what if shift was analog, right?
1:12:57SPEAKERAnd then you hold it longer
1:13:00SPEAKERand it's like the letter gets bolder
1:13:01SPEAKERor something that existed, you know?
1:13:04SPEAKER- Why really?
1:13:05SPEAKER- Yeah, it's kind of interesting.
1:13:07SPEAKERLike this was like one of the things
1:13:08SPEAKERthat people tried a long time ago
1:13:09SPEAKERand maybe the technology wasn't there
1:13:10SPEAKERand is there now, right?
1:13:12SPEAKEROr even this whole idea of like, you know,
1:13:15SPEAKERlike keyboard shortcuts or keyboard macros
1:13:17SPEAKERor you know, keyboards for gaming.
1:13:20SPEAKERLike there's this whole, like, it's a really,
1:13:24SPEAKERI don't know, yeah.
1:13:25SPEAKERIt's interesting to,
1:13:28SPEAKERit's interesting to see people kind of experiment, yeah.
1:13:30SPEAKER- Well, and it gives people, I mean, it's a personal,
1:13:34SPEAKERthis is the way people connect with their computers.
1:13:36SPEAKERSo I think there's an opportunity for personalization there.
1:13:38SPEAKERIt's funny 'cause it wasn't much more than 10 years ago,
1:13:41SPEAKERI was talking to one of the designers at Logitech
1:13:43SPEAKERfor a store I was working on.
1:13:46SPEAKERI think at Maximum PC, but it may have been tested,
1:13:47SPEAKERI can't remember.
1:13:49SPEAKERAnd I was like, hey, why are there no split?
1:13:51SPEAKERWhy do you not make split wireless or split gaming
1:13:54SPEAKERor split mechanical or whatever keyboards?
1:13:57SPEAKERAnd they were like, well, there's no market
1:13:59SPEAKERfor a split keyboard for gamers.
1:14:01SPEAKERThere's not enough gamers
1:14:02SPEAKERthat are gonna care about a split.
1:14:03SPEAKERAnd I was like, I don't know if that's true.
1:14:05SPEAKERAnd he's like, we have a lot of market research.
1:14:06SPEAKERAnd now, you know, probably at Logitech scale
1:14:08SPEAKERthat wasn't true.
1:14:09SPEAKER- Exactly, yeah.
1:14:10SPEAKER- But, you know, we all know people
1:14:13SPEAKERwho are making split keyboards
1:14:14SPEAKERthat I'm sure gamers are using.
1:14:15SPEAKERSo anyway, it's been,
1:14:20SPEAKERit's a fascinating, it's a kind of interesting place.
1:14:22SPEAKERAnd then the contrast with that is the laptop keyboards
1:14:24SPEAKERwhere everybody gets the same keyboard
1:14:27SPEAKERwhether they want it or not.
1:14:28SPEAKERAnd that's sometimes good and sometimes bad.
1:14:30SPEAKERI mean, did you talk about like the butterfly keys
1:14:33SPEAKERon the Macs and what a terrible choice that was
1:14:36SPEAKERfor six years or however long they did that?
1:14:39SPEAKER- I like very expressly avoided that
1:14:42SPEAKERbecause, you know, not just because,
1:14:46SPEAKERyou know, that's been covered pretty well.
1:14:47SPEAKERAnd I think that's like a lot of, you know, Casey Johnson
1:14:50SPEAKERwrote about it.
1:14:51SPEAKERThere's a lot of really fun, interesting writing.
1:14:54SPEAKERBut also because there's this interesting tension
1:14:58SPEAKERI think about like how much my book is in the present.
1:15:00SPEAKERSo it doesn't age poorly, right?
1:15:02SPEAKERAnd I do have a lot about like the mechanical keyboards
1:15:06SPEAKERand the sort of resurgence of this in the nineties
1:15:08SPEAKERand 2000s and present
1:15:10SPEAKERbecause that's just like a really cool story.
1:15:12SPEAKERBut I kind of wanted to maybe not get too like modern
1:15:17SPEAKERin that way, because who knows,
1:15:18SPEAKERmaybe there's gonna be like a development a year from now
1:15:20SPEAKERwhere Tim Cook goes on the stage and say like,
1:15:22SPEAKER"I am so sorry, we've screwed up.
1:15:25SPEAKERLook under your seat."
1:15:27SPEAKERThis is a mechanical keyboard.
1:15:28SPEAKERAnd then he would do that, right?
1:15:31SPEAKERIt sounds very much like Tim Cook.
1:15:33SPEAKER- Well, except for the saying,
1:15:34SPEAKER"We're sorry, we made a mistake" part.
1:15:35SPEAKERThat doesn't seem super happening.
1:15:36SPEAKER- No, no, no.
1:15:37SPEAKERBut like, you know, so even though like it is
1:15:39SPEAKERlike the funny thing about like a funny and surprising thing
1:15:44SPEAKERis like how boring Apple keyboards actually are.
1:15:46SPEAKERLike how little there is.
1:15:48SPEAKERThis is like the most maybe interesting Apple story,
1:15:51SPEAKERApple keyboard story in history, right?
1:15:53SPEAKERIt's like the Apple adjustable,
1:15:54SPEAKERwhich was this extended keyboard, sorry,
1:15:56SPEAKERthe split keyboard adjustable keyboard they had in the nineties
1:16:02SPEAKERthat was like the one interesting Apple keyboard, right?
1:16:04SPEAKERAnd it sort of died pretty quickly.
1:16:07SPEAKERAnd honestly, like the most, to me,
1:16:12SPEAKERinteresting Apple keyboard is actually Apple extended
1:16:14SPEAKERbecause not for the reasons people think.
1:16:17SPEAKERA lot of people love, you know,
1:16:18SPEAKERa lot of Apple fans are like, "This was the best keyboard.
1:16:20SPEAKERThis is like the model M of this universe."
1:16:25SPEAKERAnd, but what's really interesting,
1:16:26SPEAKERit is like almost literally the model M of this universe
1:16:30SPEAKERin all the wrong ways, which is like,
1:16:31SPEAKERthis is like, this is a PC keyboard.
1:16:33SPEAKERLike it has labels like print screen and scroll log, right?
1:16:36SPEAKERWhat are you doing?
1:16:37SPEAKERYou're like, this is like the least Apple keyboard ever.
1:16:39SPEAKERThis is like Steve Jobs hated that, you know, that matters.
1:16:42SPEAKERBut you know, he hated the keyboard for a reason,
1:16:44SPEAKERwhich is like, hey, I left and you lost your way.
1:16:46SPEAKERAlmost immediately you made a PC keyboard.
1:16:49SPEAKERYou have a control key.
1:16:50SPEAKERLike I tried not to have a control key.
1:16:53SPEAKERNow you have control and command.
1:16:55SPEAKERWhat are you doing?
1:16:56SPEAKERSo I find this like really interesting.
1:17:00SPEAKERYeah, but no, you're right.
1:17:02SPEAKERThey're like sort of laptop,
1:17:03SPEAKERlike we've never had a laptop with,
1:17:07SPEAKERthere are some stories like there,
1:17:09SPEAKERthere are two experimental laptops with split keyboards.
1:17:13SPEAKERThey're actually a photos of one is from SGI of all places,
1:17:16SPEAKERsilicon graphics.
1:17:17SPEAKEROne is from Samsung that you could actually buy.
1:17:20SPEAKERSo there were some experiments,
1:17:20SPEAKERbut yeah, the form factor doesn't really allow a lot of,
1:17:24SPEAKERand then there was the finger works,
1:17:26SPEAKERwhich is a really interesting keyboard
1:17:28SPEAKERthat actually inspired the iPhone keyboard,
1:17:31SPEAKERbut it was like a physical touch keyboard.
1:17:34SPEAKERAnd they made this really interesting thing
1:17:36SPEAKERthat you could like swap out your power book keyboard.
1:17:40SPEAKERAnd if you're brave enough,
1:17:41SPEAKERwhich not very many people would be,
1:17:44SPEAKERespecially today, I don't imagine, right.
1:17:45SPEAKERBut so yeah, we never got like modular laptop keyboards
1:17:49SPEAKERfor probably good reasons,
1:17:50SPEAKERbut yeah, it is an interesting thing.
1:17:52SPEAKERAnd I think maybe explains
1:17:53SPEAKERwhy people love those like little portable keyboards
1:17:55SPEAKERthey can just take with them, right.
1:17:57SPEAKERAnd they can use them elsewhere.
1:18:01SPEAKER- And I will, can I steal your Dvorak question?
1:18:05SPEAKER- Yeah, go for it.
1:18:06SPEAKER- These are Will's words, I'm reading from the notes.
1:18:08SPEAKERAre you really a Dvorak user?
1:18:09SPEAKER- Am I, no, oh my God, no, no, no.
1:18:11SPEAKERI'm a, this is gonna reduce my street cred.
1:18:16SPEAKERI don't even touch type really well.
1:18:17SPEAKERI touch type with one hand better than the other hand,
1:18:20SPEAKERwhich is a punty possible.
1:18:21SPEAKERAnd now I have studies telling me it's perfectly okay.
1:18:24SPEAKERSo if it helps you touch typing is overrated
1:18:27SPEAKERfor most people, for you, the audience, but.
1:18:30SPEAKER- You're not here to touch type shame anyone, Marcin.
1:18:32SPEAKER- Yeah, it's, you do what you have to do.
1:18:34SPEAKERI mean, unless you have issues, you know,
1:18:36SPEAKERwith your wrists or your shoulders, of course.
1:18:38SPEAKERAnd I'm not making fun of that,
1:18:40SPEAKERthat those are real and hard and tricky.
1:18:43SPEAKERBut a lot of people are lucky enough,
1:18:44SPEAKERthey can type on query however they want
1:18:45SPEAKERand it's good enough because we're not professional typers.
1:18:49SPEAKERNone, most of us are not,
1:18:51SPEAKERespecially not compared to, you know,
1:18:52SPEAKERlike typists in offices a hundred years ago,
1:18:56SPEAKERtyping for 10 hours straight
1:18:57SPEAKERon like really, really heavy keyboards.
1:19:00SPEAKERNo, I just never had to learn any of this.
1:19:03SPEAKERI tried to do coded keyboards.
1:19:06SPEAKERI tried to do Dvorak, in the Kickstarter video,
1:19:08SPEAKERI typed in Dvorak and it's like,
1:19:11SPEAKERI don't know if it's obvious, but it was like all memorized.
1:19:14SPEAKER- I thought you were being very deliberate
1:19:16SPEAKERfor what it's worth.
1:19:17SPEAKERIt looked like you were doing intentional typing rather,
1:19:19SPEAKERmovie typing.
1:19:20SPEAKER- It's like, there's like an intentional typo even in it,
1:19:23SPEAKERjust for visual effects.
1:19:24SPEAKERBut no, no, no, I'm not,
1:19:27SPEAKERI'm not a role model in any way when it comes to typing.
1:19:30SPEAKERAnd I think that's okay.
1:19:32SPEAKERI met even my, some of my coworkers,
1:19:34SPEAKERthey have like impressive touch typing skills,
1:19:37SPEAKERwhich I admire and sort of harkens back
1:19:43SPEAKERto like the speed typing competitions
1:19:44SPEAKERfrom late 19th centuries.
1:19:46SPEAKERIt's very fun to watch, but I can't do that.
1:19:50SPEAKER- The speed typing competitions were like,
1:19:51SPEAKERthat was an interesting part of the Shift Wars chapter.
1:19:55SPEAKERIn that like people were going on road shows
1:19:57SPEAKERaround different parts of the country showing off,
1:20:00SPEAKERcompeting with their best typewriter and their best man,
1:20:03SPEAKERbecause at that time typing was like,
1:20:07SPEAKERyeah, it was a job that men did.
1:20:09SPEAKERAnd then at some point there's a gender switch swap
1:20:12SPEAKERthat happened at the start of the 20th century, I guess.
1:20:15SPEAKERIt seemed like, I don't know.
1:20:16SPEAKER- Yeah, a lot of things to unpack here.
1:20:17SPEAKERSo I think, yeah, I mean,
1:20:20SPEAKERit's funny because I think typing, first of all,
1:20:23SPEAKERtyping is kind of impressive when you think about it, right?
1:20:26SPEAKERLike there were very early studies where they did,
1:20:29SPEAKERthey said like the way we understand the brain works,
1:20:32SPEAKERyou could only be able to type
1:20:33SPEAKERlike 40 characters per minute.
1:20:36SPEAKERAnd we actually typed a lot faster than that.
1:20:39SPEAKERSo there was like a discovery for us
1:20:40SPEAKERthat sort of a combined power of,
1:20:44SPEAKERas we talked about earlier,
1:20:45SPEAKERlike the fingers and the brain
1:20:46SPEAKERis just like actually incredible.
1:20:47SPEAKERAnd then the fact that you can,
1:20:49SPEAKERyou don't have to look at the keys,
1:20:50SPEAKERyou can actually talk to somebody when typing.
1:20:52SPEAKERThat's like, it's part of the high level, right?
1:20:54SPEAKERSo like the one thing that I,
1:20:57SPEAKERthat's gonna sound funny,
1:20:58SPEAKERand some people might find themselves,
1:21:01SPEAKERI have like blank key cups
1:21:02SPEAKERbecause it just makes me look cool, I think,
1:21:04SPEAKEReven though there's nobody here to look at them.
1:21:07SPEAKERBut like, you know, it's just kind of cool
1:21:08SPEAKERto like recognize it's like,
1:21:10SPEAKERoh, I've done this enough that I don't need labels.
1:21:13SPEAKERAnd so, yeah, like seeing somebody type really fast
1:21:15SPEAKERand especially with typewriters,
1:21:16SPEAKERthere was also this whole like visual,
1:21:19SPEAKERyou know, like you put in the paper,
1:21:21SPEAKERyou do carriage returns.
1:21:23SPEAKERYou can also get like really good at that.
1:21:24SPEAKERAnd it's really incredibly impressive
1:21:25SPEAKERand fun to watch like the paper,
1:21:27SPEAKERlike the last page of paper didn't even hit the floor
1:21:30SPEAKERwhen you're already typing on the next one.
1:21:32SPEAKERIt's just like something sports-like, you know?
1:21:34SPEAKERAnd similarly to, but maybe more abstractly
1:21:37SPEAKERwhen you watch like people playing "Star Craft," right?
1:21:38SPEAKERWhere they have like incredible APMs
1:21:40SPEAKERor whatever that's called,
1:21:41SPEAKERwhere like you don't actually understand what's going on,
1:21:45SPEAKERright?
1:21:46SPEAKERWhere people are like, what do they do?
1:21:49SPEAKERThey, in order to just stay in rhythm,
1:21:51SPEAKERthey just press keys that don't do anything, just so, you know.
1:21:54SPEAKER- Kind of phantom inputs that don't do anything
1:21:56SPEAKERjust to keep their fingers moving, yeah.
1:21:57SPEAKER- Yeah, which is like amazing, right?
1:21:59SPEAKERIn a way.
1:22:00SPEAKERSo there's still stuff, you know,
1:22:02SPEAKERthere's still websites that you can type quickly
1:22:03SPEAKERand people cheer you on.
1:22:04SPEAKERSo it's kind of interesting that like, you know,
1:22:07SPEAKERit used to be just for selling typewriters, of course,
1:22:09SPEAKERor even selling particular genres.
1:22:12SPEAKERAnd now it's just, I don't know, for fun or bragging rights.
1:22:17SPEAKERMy YouTube is all about that, of course,
1:22:20SPEAKERbecause the algorithm knows who I am
1:22:22SPEAKERand I see those over and over again.
1:22:23SPEAKERBut you also mentioned something like the other thing
1:22:26SPEAKERthat the thing is important
1:22:27SPEAKERand it was important for me to put in a book,
1:22:31SPEAKERwhich is this whole relationship with, you know,
1:22:33SPEAKERlike gender and all of that.
1:22:36SPEAKERAnd it, you know, depends largely on country, right?
1:22:40SPEAKERBut like if we limit to like America
1:22:42SPEAKERand the West quote unquote Western world,
1:22:44SPEAKERthere was this interesting thing where, you know,
1:22:46SPEAKERtyping was very female up until like 1970s or '80s.
1:22:51SPEAKERAnd there were, you know, all of these women in offices
1:22:55SPEAKERjust retyping what their bosses wanted,
1:22:57SPEAKERtyping and mostly retyping, right?
1:23:00SPEAKERThe same thing over and over again.
1:23:01SPEAKERAnd, you know, in one way you could see it as a, you know,
1:23:08SPEAKERconversion of quote unquote emancipation,
1:23:10SPEAKERlike getting women in the office for the first time, right?
1:23:12SPEAKERLike not something that existed before,
1:23:16SPEAKERbut, you know, there was not that much like upward mobility
1:23:19SPEAKERvery, very quickly that was closed off.
1:23:21SPEAKERIt was just like mindless.
1:23:22SPEAKERAnd then eventually you would like be sitting down
1:23:25SPEAKERin a sort of like dungeon underground sort of typing
1:23:29SPEAKERand typewriters were replaced with video display terminals.
1:23:31SPEAKERIt was like, they were much,
1:23:34SPEAKERwell, I don't know if they were much less pleasant,
1:23:36SPEAKERthey were unpleasant other ways.
1:23:38SPEAKER'Cause, you know, we like, as always,
1:23:41SPEAKERlike we care more about ergonomics,
1:23:45SPEAKERthe more people are affected, like earn more money, right?
1:23:49SPEAKERWhen programmers, when journalists are affected
1:23:51SPEAKERby quote unquote RSI, we care,
1:23:54SPEAKERhistorically we care more than before.
1:23:57SPEAKERAnd you see this sort of fascinating transition moment
1:24:01SPEAKERin the, around the '80s when home computers came around
1:24:04SPEAKERand those home computers were also, you know,
1:24:06SPEAKERlargely put in offices because it's the same technology.
1:24:08SPEAKERAnd you see in all of these advertisements,
1:24:10SPEAKERthis manufacturer is very, very rapidly
1:24:13SPEAKERtrying to reestablish typing as something men could do.
1:24:17SPEAKERLike, you're not gonna be, you know,
1:24:19SPEAKERthere's like this, I have a gallery in my book
1:24:22SPEAKERof multiple photos of somebody like a guy typing
1:24:24SPEAKERand a woman looking in the background,
1:24:26SPEAKERlike sort of like, yeah, you're still my man.
1:24:28SPEAKERYou're like, like I still, you know,
1:24:31SPEAKERrespect even though you're typing now.
1:24:33SPEAKERThere was this very concerted effort
1:24:35SPEAKERto kind of reestablish typing as something
1:24:37SPEAKERthat is not that particular gendered, which, you know.
1:24:41SPEAKER- I mean, that was the thing I, like,
1:24:43SPEAKERI experienced that when I started working
1:24:45SPEAKERin the early '90s, you know, the women who worked in the,
1:24:48SPEAKERI worked in a Congressman's office,
1:24:49SPEAKERhe'd been serving for 30 years, he was old,
1:24:51SPEAKERhis staff had been there for a long time.
1:24:53SPEAKERAnd the, some of the women who worked in the office
1:24:55SPEAKERwere like, hey, what, you know how to type?
1:24:57SPEAKERThat's weird.
1:24:58SPEAKERWhich, which was shocking me.
1:24:59SPEAKERI had never even occurred to me
1:25:00SPEAKER'cause I grew up with computers.
1:25:03SPEAKEROne of the other things that struck me
1:25:05SPEAKERas I was thinking about this topic, Marcin,
1:25:07SPEAKERand talking to you is that, you know,
1:25:08SPEAKERwe had a hundred years, 120 plus years
1:25:11SPEAKERwhere precision got better every,
1:25:13SPEAKERevery new generation of keyboards.
1:25:15SPEAKERYou know, we, they were getting, you know,
1:25:18SPEAKERmore precise, you could go faster.
1:25:20SPEAKERYou know, you could backspace,
1:25:22SPEAKERyou could have cleaner results.
1:25:24SPEAKERAnd then software keyboards started in like 2007
1:25:27SPEAKERand we immediately stepped back.
1:25:28SPEAKERLike, it seemed like three, four generations there.
1:25:31SPEAKERDo you feel like, like, do you feel like
1:25:34SPEAKERwe've reached a pinnacle with software keyboards,
1:25:36SPEAKERlike on the iPhone and the Android phones?
1:25:38SPEAKEROr you think that there's room to improve?
1:25:40SPEAKERLike, is ducking just a thing that's going to happen
1:25:44SPEAKERfor all eternity?
1:25:45SPEAKER- It's a really good question.
1:25:46SPEAKERAnd you know, I, it's a really good question
1:25:50SPEAKERand still like work in progress, right?
1:25:52SPEAKERBecause I actually feel like this is more anecdotal evidence
1:25:55SPEAKERthan me interviewing people,
1:25:56SPEAKERbut I feel like the iPhone and Android keyboard,
1:25:58SPEAKERwell, I actually only use the iOS.
1:26:00SPEAKERSo maybe I should talk about that.
1:26:02SPEAKERIt's gotten worse too, for me.
1:26:04SPEAKERLike it's sort of, you know,
1:26:05SPEAKERit's sort of randomly capitalized.
1:26:08SPEAKERLike, I don't know.
1:26:09SPEAKERI would feel like,
1:26:11SPEAKERI actually feel kind of disappointed in,
1:26:13SPEAKERin like software keyboards because I think in 2007,
1:26:17SPEAKERthere was this great effort to actually make it happen,
1:26:19SPEAKERright, and like pretty well documented in some,
1:26:21SPEAKERsome books and stuff.
1:26:23SPEAKERAnd,
1:26:26SPEAKERand it was stuck generally, I think, impressive, you know,
1:26:28SPEAKERlike, like how,
1:26:30SPEAKERhow much the keyboard would help you out,
1:26:33SPEAKERunderstanding that, like, hey, this is like much worse
1:26:36SPEAKERthan, you know, keyboards that came before.
1:26:39SPEAKEROf course, what happened was people got used,
1:26:41SPEAKERpeople got like much better at thumb typing, right?
1:26:43SPEAKERSo there's like one thing,
1:26:44SPEAKERmuch better than anybody suspected, always happens.
1:26:47SPEAKERBut yeah, I feel like today,
1:26:49SPEAKERlike I'm seeing like, I would imagine,
1:26:53SPEAKERI would have expected keyboards to go like much,
1:26:55SPEAKERmuch better than where they are right now
1:26:58SPEAKERin sort of learning my patterns
1:27:00SPEAKERand in understanding what I'm doing.
1:27:02SPEAKERAnd it sort of feels like I'm finding with the keyboard
1:27:05SPEAKERmuch more than I used to.
1:27:07SPEAKERAnd, and the sort of software,
1:27:10SPEAKERI'm curious, actually, if you have an opinion here,
1:27:12SPEAKERlike the kind of like the revolution of like Apple added,
1:27:16SPEAKERlike software keyboards that you could install on your own,
1:27:19SPEAKERbut it ever, it like never felt good.
1:27:21SPEAKERIt always feels kind of slow and blinky.
1:27:24SPEAKER- It was really second class.
1:27:25SPEAKER- Yeah, it's like like an iFrame, you know,
1:27:27SPEAKERlike if that makes sense to anybody,
1:27:28SPEAKERit sort of feels like, oh yeah.
1:27:30SPEAKERAnd then, and that like never really,
1:27:33SPEAKERI don't think that ever went anywhere, right?
1:27:35SPEAKERLike I think some of those,
1:27:37SPEAKERthe most popular ones got bought out by,
1:27:41SPEAKERI don't know, bigger companies or just folded
1:27:43SPEAKERbecause there's like no market for this.
1:27:44SPEAKERSo, so yeah, I'm a little sad about like how,
1:27:47SPEAKERhow we never got, how we never got like
1:27:51SPEAKERwhere I think we could have been in 2023.
1:27:53SPEAKER- Yeah, it feels like consistently
1:27:55SPEAKERI'm finding the same mistakes over and over again.
1:27:57SPEAKERLike the, like getting periods instead of ends
1:28:00SPEAKERor ends instead of periods, or, or, you know,
1:28:03SPEAKERthe ducking is the classic example,
1:28:04SPEAKERbut maybe my language is more colorful than yours.
1:28:08SPEAKER- Yeah, I actually feel like, I don't know.
1:28:10SPEAKERAnd this is another thing, like, like it's really hard to,
1:28:15SPEAKERyou know, the release notes for anything
1:28:16SPEAKERthat Apple does are like a whole different story, right?
1:28:18SPEAKERBut like, I wish, I wish we got to know
1:28:21SPEAKERwhat's actually changing, because I feel like, for example,
1:28:24SPEAKERsince like a few years ago,
1:28:28SPEAKERI think Apple is now trying to like, sorry,
1:28:30SPEAKERthe Apple keyboard is trying to autocomplete
1:28:34SPEAKERin all of the languages that I have selected as options,
1:28:37SPEAKERlike in Polish, unfortunately I have like 15 test keyboards
1:28:42SPEAKERbecause that's my job.
1:28:44SPEAKERSo now I get like auto-completions for like many languages
1:28:47SPEAKERI don't even understand.
1:28:48SPEAKERSo that I might have sort of put myself in this situation.
1:28:51SPEAKERI just wish there was explained some words I would know
1:28:54SPEAKERif removing those test keyboards would help me,
1:28:58SPEAKERor there's still this like very, very strange issue
1:29:02SPEAKERwhere if you start typing really fast,
1:29:04SPEAKERsomething very strange happens at the beginning.
1:29:05SPEAKERAnd that's been unsolved for like 10 years
1:29:08SPEAKERin a way that like feels a little sad,
1:29:11SPEAKERbut maybe just to me.
1:29:13SPEAKER- No, I think that mirrors my experience.
1:29:15SPEAKERIt's weird because it's,
1:29:16SPEAKEReverybody has the same anecdotal experience.
1:29:18SPEAKERAnd I guess when you add up enough anecdotes,
1:29:19SPEAKERmaybe somebody, maybe we should just go make a keyboard.
1:29:22SPEAKERMaybe that's the right solution.
1:29:25SPEAKER- Well, yeah, I would love to actually,
1:29:28SPEAKERI was actually, I think I made a keyboard as a joke once
1:29:31SPEAKERthat output like one character.
1:29:33SPEAKERAnd then of course, and other people had the same idea,
1:29:36SPEAKERbut no, I mean, like again, I would love that,
1:29:38SPEAKERbut like, I don't want my keyboard to be like a blinking
1:29:41SPEAKERiframe at the bottom that feels like that's like,
1:29:44SPEAKERmake me feel like, you know, like you said,
1:29:47SPEAKERfirst-class citizen and I will experiment,
1:29:49SPEAKERbut like, I don't feel like Apple would,
1:29:51SPEAKERI think they did it begrudgingly, right?
1:29:53SPEAKERLike I think they did it because Android had that.
1:29:57SPEAKER- I think their integration has gotten,
1:29:59SPEAKERit definitely hit opposite downs over the years.
1:30:01SPEAKERI used different keyboards for a long time
1:30:03SPEAKERand eventually just switched back to the iOS keyboard
1:30:05SPEAKERbecause Google kind of abandoned theirs
1:30:08SPEAKERand Microsoft's got weirdly janky and swipe
1:30:11SPEAKERand all the other interesting ones got bought up,
1:30:13SPEAKERas you said, and it's a weird space
1:30:16SPEAKERfor something that you use so much is I guess,
1:30:18SPEAKERI guess where I end up.
1:30:19SPEAKER- It's in this strange opposition
1:30:20SPEAKERto this sort of mechanical keyboard universe
1:30:23SPEAKERwhere I think you see so much variety
1:30:26SPEAKERand like almost like extreme quality in some places.
1:30:30SPEAKERIf you wanna spend money on a keyboard,
1:30:31SPEAKERyou can buy like a whole metal keyboard for like, you know,
1:30:35SPEAKERjust like wood, you know, like with a keyboard
1:30:39SPEAKERmade out of wood and closure that's just like beautiful
1:30:42SPEAKERand in software is just sort of like a, you know,
1:30:45SPEAKERyou just like lock your doors
1:30:48SPEAKERand drive a little bit faster, you know.
1:30:49SPEAKER(laughing)
1:30:51SPEAKER- I think that's it.
1:30:52SPEAKER- Yeah, I was gonna throw out a,
1:30:53SPEAKERsince just talking about anecdotes from software keyboards,
1:30:55SPEAKERI have an elderly family member who's very prone
1:30:57SPEAKERto fumbling into the return key mid-sentence a lot
1:30:59SPEAKERand they don't bother,
1:31:00SPEAKERthey don't care enough to go back and fix it.
1:31:02SPEAKERA lot of their text messages read like poetry
1:31:05SPEAKERbecause it's just like truncated phrases.
1:31:07SPEAKERAnyway, the last question, I apologize,
1:31:10SPEAKERI don't think we asked this,
1:31:12SPEAKERlike what's your daily driver?
1:31:13SPEAKERIf you could only type on one keyboard from now on,
1:31:17SPEAKERwould you be able to pick one?
1:31:21SPEAKER- Oh my God.
1:31:22SPEAKERNo, yeah, it's always hard.
1:31:24SPEAKERSo I have this, it's okay to name it,
1:31:29SPEAKERHexgears Gemini.
1:31:31SPEAKER- Yeah, we don't have any laws here, it's a podcast,
1:31:34SPEAKERyou do whatever you want, Marcin.
1:31:36SPEAKER- Yeah, it's like, I think what's important for me
1:31:38SPEAKERis just like the format.
1:31:40SPEAKERI have the, I think what people call 10 keyless,
1:31:42SPEAKERno numpad.
1:31:45SPEAKERI have, as I mentioned, like nice key cups that are blank,
1:31:48SPEAKERbut also they're in a profile from like the 1970s terminals,
1:31:54SPEAKERpartly because I just liked them
1:31:56SPEAKERand partly in like appreciation
1:31:58SPEAKERof the history of the keyboards.
1:32:00SPEAKERSo I like this one, it's wired, it has lights,
1:32:04SPEAKERbut I don't use them.
1:32:05SPEAKERIf I could continue typing on it, I would be pretty happy,
1:32:08SPEAKERbut it's funny because yeah, I wanna see what's next too.
1:32:12SPEAKERLike, I think that's the fun part
1:32:13SPEAKERabout the mechanical keyboards
1:32:15SPEAKERis that there's like so many strange experiments,
1:32:19SPEAKERso many like extremely clicky, super unclicky,
1:32:24SPEAKERextremely heavy, like weird things.
1:32:27SPEAKERLike, I wanna buy more keyboards
1:32:30SPEAKERjust to like experience them, right?
1:32:33SPEAKERJust to sort of play around
1:32:34SPEAKERand see what resonates with other people,
1:32:37SPEAKEReven if it doesn't resonate with me.
1:32:38SPEAKERSo I hope I don't have to pick one, if that's okay.
1:32:42SPEAKERI'm also just curious what Apple is gonna do.
1:32:44SPEAKERLike, I mean, hopefully they'll stop experimenting
1:32:47SPEAKERfor a while, but you know, like the whole touch,
1:32:51SPEAKERwe didn't even talk about the touch bar
1:32:53SPEAKERbecause that's a keyboard too.
1:32:54SPEAKERThat's even worse than the bottom.
1:32:56SPEAKERAnyway, like I, you know, on one hand,
1:32:59SPEAKERI don't want them to do anything ever again with keyboards
1:33:02SPEAKERbecause boy, what a track record, right?
1:33:04SPEAKERBut also like, it would be interesting to see what's next,
1:33:08SPEAKERyou know, like with laptop keyboards, right?
1:33:11SPEAKEROr like, you know, there's this whole space
1:33:15SPEAKERif you rewind back to people like Doug Engelbart
1:33:18SPEAKERin, you know, 1960s, this sort of idea
1:33:21SPEAKERof if you have one hand on a keyboard
1:33:23SPEAKERand one hand on a mouse and now trackpad,
1:33:26SPEAKERlike that's where like really amazing things can happen.
1:33:31SPEAKERAnd we kind of haven't gotten there and maybe we can't,
1:33:34SPEAKERat least not in a way Engelbart and vision
1:33:36SPEAKERbecause he was, you know, incredibly professional.
1:33:38SPEAKERHe had the key set, you know, it was just like,
1:33:42SPEAKERtheir anecdotes or stories I had from the book
1:33:46SPEAKERthat it was actually pretty awful to use.
1:33:48SPEAKERYou know, the demo in 1968 was amazing,
1:33:51SPEAKERbut it was like, it was even worse than the iPhone demo,
1:33:54SPEAKERwhich is just like, they just put it,
1:33:56SPEAKERonly one person could do it, right?
1:33:57SPEAKERAnd it worked perfectly well and nobody else could.
1:34:00SPEAKERBut, you know, there's something beautiful
1:34:01SPEAKERabout this pointing device.
1:34:03SPEAKERAnd, you know, I know I heard that Apple's expanding
1:34:06SPEAKERwith like touch screens now, maybe.
1:34:08SPEAKERThere's gonna be touch screens on my book.
1:34:09SPEAKERSo I'm curious where it's all gonna go
1:34:12SPEAKERbecause it might be someplace interesting,
1:34:17SPEAKERalthough I don't know if it's Apple
1:34:18SPEAKERwho's gonna get us there
1:34:19SPEAKERor Microsoft for that matter or Google.
1:34:22SPEAKER- The thought that the modern keyboard
1:34:24SPEAKERis maybe just another evolutionary dead end
1:34:26SPEAKERon the trees is fascinating.
1:34:29SPEAKERThank you so, so much for coming by.
1:34:31SPEAKERIs there people, where can people find you?
1:34:34SPEAKERI feel like we used to do Twitters here,
1:34:35SPEAKERbut maybe not so much these days.
1:34:38SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, I guess I'm still on Twitter,
1:34:40SPEAKERbut I'm on Mastodon.
1:34:42SPEAKERI'm on, anyway, I have a website.
1:34:48SPEAKERWhat is the right answer here?
1:34:49SPEAKER- What's the website?
1:34:51SPEAKER- Oh, website.
1:34:51SPEAKERWell, okay, these days, my website is shifthappens.site,
1:34:57SPEAKERwhich is apparently a domain.
1:34:58SPEAKERSo there you can find other,
1:35:02SPEAKERthat's like the thing for me right now is the keyboard book.
1:35:04SPEAKERSo that's the website for a keyboard book.
1:35:06SPEAKERIt's actually really fun.
1:35:07SPEAKERIt's, there's some interactive things.
1:35:11SPEAKERThere's some experiments.
1:35:12SPEAKERThere's gonna be more.
1:35:12SPEAKERI actually, I'm gonna release more in February,
1:35:15SPEAKERjust like fun, fun little interactive things
1:35:17SPEAKERbecause I love that there's like some 3D stuff.
1:35:19SPEAKERSo yeah, check it out.
1:35:21SPEAKERAnd then you can, there are links to how to message me
1:35:25SPEAKERand where to find me elsewhere on that side.
1:35:28SPEAKER- And the book is on Kickstarter for the next 27 days
1:35:31SPEAKERor something, I think.
1:35:32SPEAKERWell, by the time people hear this, it'll be 25 or so.
1:35:34SPEAKER- That's correct.
1:35:35SPEAKERYeah, the campaign just started two days ago.
1:35:38SPEAKERSo we still have like 25 days to go.
1:35:40SPEAKERSo yeah, check that out too.
1:35:41SPEAKERAnd click the buttons if that's exciting to you.
1:35:44SPEAKER- Can I just say your design background
1:35:45SPEAKERis evident on this website.
1:35:46SPEAKERIt's a very appealing, visually appealing website.
1:35:50SPEAKER- Oh, thank you.
1:35:51SPEAKER- Nice shade of orange.
1:35:52SPEAKER- Well, I was gonna say,
1:35:55SPEAKERwe talked about it a little bit in the episode,
1:35:56SPEAKERbut this is presumably this is,
1:35:58SPEAKERI mean, you don't know that you're gonna do
1:35:59SPEAKERother editions of this.
1:36:00SPEAKERSo if you wanna get the book,
1:36:01SPEAKERif you wanna have the book, this is the time to get it
1:36:03SPEAKER'cause it'll be presumably difficult to find
1:36:06SPEAKERafter the Kickstarter ends.
1:36:09SPEAKER- Yeah, even if I ever do another edition of this,
1:36:13SPEAKERwhich I'm not promising, I'm really not promising that,
1:36:16SPEAKERthere won't be one like this, right?
1:36:17SPEAKERI think this is the edition with a really nice slip case
1:36:21SPEAKERwith now with the third volume that we added
1:36:23SPEAKERas a stretch goal.
1:36:24SPEAKERSo it's just gonna, I hope it's fun.
1:36:27SPEAKERI hope it's like a really nice artifact
1:36:29SPEAKERand yeah, and if you like, yeah,
1:36:32SPEAKERif you like the stories, there's a lot more of that there.
1:36:34SPEAKER- Thank you so much, Marcin.
1:36:35SPEAKERWe'll put links to everything in the show notes,
1:36:37SPEAKERbut it's been wonderful having you.
1:36:38SPEAKERWell, I'll have to have you back after the book's out
1:36:40SPEAKERand we can talk about all that.
1:36:42SPEAKERCurious, as we talk to people who make stuff occasionally
1:36:45SPEAKERand like, I kinda wanna hear the story of the book
1:36:48SPEAKERseparate from the story of the keyboards at some point.
1:36:50SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, that's the whole journey
1:36:51SPEAKERof like getting it printed and stuff.
1:36:53SPEAKERIt's still in front of me mostly.
1:36:56SPEAKER(upbeat music)
1:36:58SPEAKER- Thank you so much, Marcin, for coming by
1:37:00SPEAKERand telling us about the book.
1:37:01SPEAKERThe book is Shift Happens.
1:37:03SPEAKERYou can find it at shifthappens.site.
1:37:05SPEAKERThere's a link to the Kickstarter there.
1:37:07SPEAKERI ordered my copy.
1:37:09SPEAKERI'm excited to have it coming sometime this fall, hopefully.
1:37:12SPEAKERAnd I can't wait to learn more about the keyboard, frankly.
1:37:19SPEAKERI use it every day.
1:37:21SPEAKERI try not to fetishize computer hardware,
1:37:23SPEAKERbut I feel like the keyboard is the one place
1:37:25SPEAKERwhere I'm a little dangerously close.
1:37:27SPEAKER- I think that ship sailed already.
1:37:28SPEAKERIf you look at the range of the range,
1:37:31SPEAKERokay, once the hardware starts looking like candy,
1:37:34SPEAKERI feel like the fetishism has fully taken over
1:37:37SPEAKERand there's a lot of keys out there
1:37:38SPEAKERthat just look like chiclets.
1:37:40SPEAKER- Look, mine is, I'm restrained.
1:37:43SPEAKERI have a simple blue and white with silver keyboard
1:37:46SPEAKERsitting on my desk.
1:37:47SPEAKERThere's nothing tasteful.
1:37:49SPEAKERThe lighting is discrete and cool.
1:37:52SPEAKERMaybe a bit cold and austere, but I can get behind it.
1:37:55SPEAKER- I mean, the rest of the desk is cluttered enough
1:37:58SPEAKERthat it warms up the whole thing.
1:38:00SPEAKER- It's the one bastion of order in a desk of chaos.
1:38:05SPEAKER- I got to say,
1:38:06SPEAKERMarcin talking about his terminal keys keyboard
1:38:09SPEAKERmakes me think, man, maybe I should build
1:38:10SPEAKERa terminal keys keyboard with those,
1:38:13SPEAKER'cause they're those round edges
1:38:14SPEAKERwith the kind of cupped tops.
1:38:17SPEAKERSuch a nice,
1:38:18SPEAKERI haven't had one of those since a really, really long time
1:38:21SPEAKERand I'm kind of tempted.
1:38:23SPEAKER- Some of the photos,
1:38:24SPEAKEReven in this one sample chapter of stuff,
1:38:26SPEAKERespecially the stuff from kind of '70s, '80s period.
1:38:28SPEAKER- Got the Olivetti with the conical keys and the round tops.
1:38:33SPEAKER- And also just the color scheme on that thing.
1:38:35SPEAKERI mean, this is not great
1:38:37SPEAKERwithout people being able to see the picture, I guess,
1:38:39SPEAKERbut it's like the entire typewriter,
1:38:41SPEAKERor is that a typewriter or teletype?
1:38:44SPEAKER- I think it's a teletype, I can't remember.
1:38:46SPEAKER- Might be a teletype, but it's the whole thing.
1:38:47SPEAKERThe whole thing is basically white and with green accents.
1:38:50SPEAKER- It's very Italian.
1:38:51SPEAKER- It's very stylish.
1:38:52SPEAKER- Yeah, there's a period of time
1:38:54SPEAKERwhen Olivetti was designing keyboards
1:38:56SPEAKERwhere you can just look at it and know,
1:38:58SPEAKERoh, right, that's one of theirs,
1:38:59SPEAKER'cause they're the only ones that were crazy enough
1:39:00SPEAKERto make keys that were this shape.
1:39:03SPEAKERBut again, yeah, the website is shifthappens.site.
1:39:06SPEAKERI'm super stoked for Marcin.
1:39:08SPEAKERI'm glad his Kickstarter's going well.
1:39:09SPEAKER- And also just like cannot say thanks enough
1:39:13SPEAKERfor coming by and talking to us.
1:39:14SPEAKERLike that was such a great conversation.
1:39:15SPEAKERI could have talked another two hours to him
1:39:18SPEAKERand just asked him more and more stuff about the subject.
1:39:21SPEAKER- Yeah, I feel like once I have the book
1:39:23SPEAKERand I have time to read it,
1:39:24SPEAKERI kind of want to bring him back
1:39:25SPEAKERand have him tell more stories.
1:39:26SPEAKER'Cause there's like, his fantastic stories
1:39:29SPEAKERabout keyboards and his travels
1:39:31SPEAKERand learning how to make the book.
1:39:34SPEAKERLike he started this whole thing without ever,
1:39:36SPEAKERhe's not a journalist, he's a designer, right?
1:39:38SPEAKER- The ups and downs of getting this book made,
1:39:40SPEAKERthat dastardly museum that would not let him.
1:39:43SPEAKER- I want to find those people.
1:39:44SPEAKER- Even use their photographs, like really?
1:39:47SPEAKER- Yeah, what jerks.
1:39:48SPEAKER- Well, they're gonna feel goofy.
1:39:49SPEAKERAnyway, you know who else I'd like to thank
1:39:52SPEAKERin addition to Marcin?
1:39:53SPEAKER- Who's that?
1:39:54SPEAKER- Our patrons, Brian.
1:39:55SPEAKER- Oh, yeah.
1:39:56SPEAKER- Without whom, we wouldn't be here right now.
1:39:58SPEAKER- That's right, it's true.
1:39:59SPEAKER- So thank you, patrons.
1:40:00SPEAKER- Thank you, thank you, patrons.
1:40:03SPEAKER- As always, we'd like to thank all of our patrons.
1:40:05SPEAKERA reminder again, if you're a patron or not,
1:40:08SPEAKERcheck out the Mastodon.
1:40:09SPEAKERIt's mastodon.com, it's available for everyone.
1:40:11SPEAKERIt's funded by patrons, just like the show.
1:40:14SPEAKERSo if you like the Mastodon, consider chucking in
1:40:18SPEAKERfor the Patreon too.
1:40:21SPEAKERBut we want to thank our executive producer
1:40:22SPEAKERto your patrons today on this show right now,
1:40:25SPEAKERincluding Nick Johnston,
1:40:27SPEAKERPaddle Creek Games Makers of Fractured Vale,
1:40:29SPEAKERAndrew Slosky, Octothorpe of Bunny Crimes, Just Wedge,
1:40:32SPEAKERJoel Krauska, Twinkle Twinkie, David Allen,
1:40:34SPEAKERand James Kamik.
1:40:35SPEAKERThank you all so, so much.
1:40:36SPEAKERWe really appreciate you, each and every one.
1:40:39SPEAKER- Yes, we do.
1:40:41SPEAKER- And that is gonna do it for us this month.
1:40:44SPEAKERI'm gonna come away from this podcast staring
1:40:47SPEAKERwith some amount of shame at this Apple keyboard
1:40:49SPEAKERin front of me, I feel, I feel it's...
1:40:52SPEAKER- Look, it was a lot of restraint for me to hear him say,
1:40:58SPEAKERreally the only company I can think of
1:40:59SPEAKERthat makes terrible keyboards consistently is Apple.
1:41:02SPEAKERAnd like the fact that in Marcin,
1:41:06SPEAKERa noted keyboard expert's mind,
1:41:08SPEAKERthe Apple butterfly keyboard isn't even really noteworthy
1:41:11SPEAKER'cause he just assumed that the Mac keyboards
1:41:13SPEAKERwere gonna be bad.
1:41:16SPEAKERIt's really telling.
1:41:17SPEAKERIt's a scathing indictment, I think,
1:41:19SPEAKERof the entire state of the Mac keyboard ecosystem, Brad.
1:41:22SPEAKER- Look, man, it's not the keyboard,
1:41:25SPEAKERit's what you type on it.