A few months ago I was celebrating the fact that I took the time to teach myself touch typing skills when I was younger and lamenting that such an amazing skill (I’m nothing if not modest) was not, in general, taught in schools. After all, my typing abilities, I calculated, had increased my productivity by four hours a week, on average.
And then this week, I discovered, rather annoyingly, how good my phone has become at converting my speech into written text. Which just goes to show that we can never be complacent about our skills or assume that what we know or can do today, will be as applicable in the future.
My phone is not yet perfect, but this new discovery does mean that I am able to write whilst I walk the dog, which is often when the most random and occasionally useful thoughts seem to spring into my brain. It means I can write ‘in the moment’ rather than having to store ideas in my already busy head, which means there’s more chance of them reaching other people.
I guess this discovery also means I should now be suggesting that instead of teaching children to touch type, we should be bemoaning the fact that they spend so much time texting and using written communication, when they should be learning to annunciate words clearly. But I’m sure that if I did that, within a few months, my new viewpoint would be proven to be out of date again. Such is the pace of change; a pace of change that can easily make fools of us and make our business models seem old-fashioned, if we are not always looking forward and anticipating changes before they occur.
Which brings me rather neatly to the fact that Glasstap will be launching something exciting and new in August (again) and offering a 50% discount to the pioneers amongst you.
More on that soon. In the meantime I’m going to focus on teaching my phone that turnip does not begin with the letters T A R and that all of my ums do not necessarily need to appear in the final written text.