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Javier E

What's Lost as Handwriting Fades - NYTimes.com - 3 views

www.nytimes.com/...lost-as-handwriting-fades.html

writing cursive retention learning memory

shared by Javier E on 12 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • Children who had not yet learned to read and write were presented with a letter or a shape on an index card and asked to reproduce it in one of three ways: trace the image on a page with a dotted outline, draw it on a blank white sheet, or type it on a computer. They were then placed in a brain scanner and shown the image again.
  • When children had drawn a letter freehand, they exhibited increased activity in three areas of the brain that are activated in adults when they read and write
  • By contrast, children who typed or traced the letter or shape showed no such effect. The activation was significantly weaker.
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  • Dr. James attributes the differences to the messiness inherent in free-form handwriting: Not only must we first plan and execute the action in a way that is not required when we have a traceable outline, but we are also likely to produce a result that is highly variable.
  • That variability may itself be a learning tool. “When a kid produces a messy letter,” Dr. James said, “that might help him learn it.”
  • printing, cursive writing, and typing on a keyboard are all associated with distinct and separate brain patterns — and each results in a distinct end product.
  • When the children composed text by hand, they not only consistently produced more words more quickly than they did on a keyboard, but expressed more ideas. And brain imaging in the oldest subjects suggested that the connection between writing and idea generation went even further. When these children were asked to come up with ideas for a composition, the ones with better handwriting exhibited greater neural activation in areas associated with working memory — and increased overall activation in the reading and writing networks.
  • In alexia, or impaired reading ability, some individuals who are unable to process print can still read cursive, and vice versa — suggesting that the two writing modes activate separate brain networks and engage more cognitive resources than would be the case with a single approach.
  • in both laboratory settings and real-world classrooms, students learn better when they take notes by hand than when they type on a keyboard. Contrary to earlier studies attributing the difference to the distracting effects of computers, the new research suggests that writing by hand allows the student to process a lecture’s contents and reframe it — a process of reflection and manipulation that can lead to better understanding and memory encoding.
  • “With handwriting, the very act of putting it down forces you to focus on what’s important,” he said. He added, after pausing to consider, “Maybe it helps you think better.”
Javier E

Gen Z Never Learned to Read Cursive - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...671246

writing cursive trends language technology education social media

shared by Javier E on 16 Sep 22 - No Cached
  • Who else can’t read cursive? I asked the class. The answer: about two-thirds. And who can’t write it? Even more. What did they do about signatures? They had invented them by combining vestiges of whatever cursive instruction they may have had with creative squiggles and flourishes.
  • Most of my students remembered getting no more than a year or so of somewhat desultory cursive training, which was often pushed aside by a growing emphasis on “teaching to the test.” Now in college, they represent the vanguard of a cursiveless world.
  • the decline in cursive seems inevitable. Writing is, after all, a technology, and most technologies are sooner or later surpassed and replaced.
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  • As Tamara Plakins Thornton demonstrates in her book Handwriting in America, it has always been affected by changing social and cultural forces. In 18th-century America, writing was the domain of the privileged.
  • By law or custom, the enslaved were prohibited from literacy almost everywhere
  • The notion of a signature as a unique representation of a particular individual gradually came to be enshrined in the law and accepted as legitimate legal evidence.
  • Writing, though, was much less widespread—taught separately and sparingly in colonial America, most often to men of status and responsibility and to women of the upper classes. Men and women even learned different scripts—an ornamental hand for ladies, and an unadorned, more functional form for the male world of power and commerce.
  • increase in the number of women able to write. By 1860, more than 90 percent of the white population in America could both read and write.
  • Penmanship came to be seen as a marker and expression of the self—of gender and class, to be sure, but also of deeper elements of character and soul.
  • n New England, nearly all men and women could read; in the South, which had not developed an equivalent system of common schools, a far lower percentage of even the white population could do so
  • No, most of these history students admitted, they could not read manuscripts. If they were assigned a research paper, they sought subjects that relied only on published sources.
  • Didn’t professors make handwritten comments on their papers and exams? Many of the students found these illegible. Sometimes they would ask a teacher to decipher the comments; more often they just ignored them.
  • I wondered how many of my colleagues have been dutifully offering handwritten observations without any clue that they would never be read.
  • I asked the students if they made grocery lists, kept journals, or wrote thank-you or condolence letters. Almost all said yes. Almost all said they did so on laptops and phones or sometimes on paper in block letters
  • “There is something charming about receiving a handwritten note,” one student acknowledged. Did he mean charming like an antique curiosity? Charming in the sense of magical in its capacity to create physical connections between human minds? Charming as in establishing an aura of the original, the unique, and the authentic? Perhaps all of these
  • there are dangers in cursive’s loss. Students will miss the excitement and inspiration that I have seen them experience as they interact with the physical embodiment of thoughts and ideas voiced by a person long since silenced by death. Handwriting can make the past seem almost alive in the present.
  • All of us, not just students and scholars, will be affected by cursive’s loss. The inability to read handwriting deprives society of direct access to its own past. We will become reliant on a small group of trained translators and experts to report what history—including the documents and papers of our own families—was about.
  • The spread of literacy in the early modern West was driven by people’s desire to read God’s word for themselves, to be empowered by an experience of unmediated connection. The abandonment of cursive represents a curious reverse parallel: We are losing a connection, and thereby disempowering ourselves.
pantanoma

Handwriting vs typing: is the pen still mightier than the keyboard? | Science | The Gua... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...its-handwriting-decline-typing

language

shared by pantanoma on 16 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • But experts on writing do not agree: pens and keyboards bring into play very different cognitive processes. “Handwriting is a complex task which requires various skills – feeling the pen and paper, moving the writing implement, and directing movement by thought,” says Edouard Gentaz, professor of developmental psychology at the University of Geneva. “Children take several years to master this precise motor exercise: you need to hold the scripting tool firmly while moving it in such a way as to leave a different mark for each letter.” Operating a keyboard is not the same at all: all you have to do is press the right key. It is easy enough for children to learn very fast, but above all the movement is exactly the same whatever the letter. “It’s a big change,” says Roland Jouvent, head of adult psychiatry at Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris. “Handwriting is the result of a singular movement of the body, typing is not.”
Javier E

I Sent All My Text Messages in Calligraphy for a Week - Cristina Vanko - The Atlantic - 2 views

www.theatlantic.com/...373477

writing texting message handwriting calligraphy communications social network

shared by Javier E on 29 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • I decided to blend a newfound interest in calligraphy with my lifelong passion for written correspondence to create a new kind of text messaging. The idea: I wanted to message friends using calligraphic texts for one week. The average 18-to-24-year-old sends and gets something like 4,000 messages a month, which includes sending more than 500 texts a week, according to Experian. The week of my experiment, I only sent 100
  • We are a youth culture that heavily relies on emojis. I didn’t realize how much I depend on emojis and emoticons to express myself until I didn’t have them. Handdrawn emoticons, though original, just aren’t the same. I wasn't able to convey emoticons as neatly as the cleanliness of a typeface. Sketching emojis is too time consuming. To bridge the gap between time and the need for graphic imagery, I sent out selfies on special occasions when my facial expression spoke louder than words.
  • That week, the sense of urgency I normally felt about my phone virtually vanished. It was like back when texts were rationed, and when I lacked anxiety about viewing "read" receipts. I didn’t feel naked without having my phone on me every moment. 
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  • So while the experiment began as an exercise to learn calligraphy, it doubled as a useful sort of digital detox that revealed my relationship with technology. Here's what I learned:
  • Receiving handwritten messages made people feel special. The awesome feeling of receiving personalized mail really can be replicated with a handwritten text.
  • Handwriting allows for more self-expression. I found I could give words a certain flourish to mimic the intonation of spoken language. Expressing myself via handwriting could also give the illusion of real-time presence. One friend told me, “it’s like you’re here with us!”
  • Before I started, I established rules for myself: I could create only handwritten text messages for seven days, absolutely no using my phone’s keyboard. I had to write out my messages on paper, photograph them, then hit “send.” I didn’t reveal my plan to my friends unless asked
  • Sometimes you don't need to respond. Most conversations aren’t life or death situations, so it was refreshing to feel 100 percent present in all interactions. I didn’t interrupt conversations by checking social media or shooting text messages to friends. I was more in tune with my surroundings. On transit, I took part in people watching—which, yes, meant mostly watching people staring at their phones. I smiled more at passersby while walking since I didn’t feel the need to avoid human interaction by staring at my phone.
  • A phone isn't only a texting device. As I texted less, I used my phone less frequently—mostly because I didn’t feel the need to look at it to keep me busy, nor did I want to feel guilty for utilizing the keyboard through other applications. I still took photos, streamed music, and logged workouts since I felt okay with pressing buttons for selection purposes
  • People don’t expect to receive phone calls anymore. Texting brings about a less intimidating, more convenient experience. But it wasn't that long ago when real-time voice were the norm. It's clear to me that, these days, people prefer to be warned about an upcoming phone call before it comes in.
  • Having a pen and paper is handy at all times. Writing out responses is a great reminder to slow down and use your hands. While all keys on a keyboard feel the same, it’s difficult to replicate the tactile activity of tracing a letter’s shape
  • My sent messages were more thoughtful.
  • I was more careful with grammar and spelling. People often ignore the rules of grammar and spelling just to maintain the pace of texting conversation. But because a typical calligraphic text took minutes to craft, I had time to make sure I got things right. The usual texting acronyms and misspellings look absurd when texted with type, but they'd be especially ridiculous written by hand.
Javier E

Opinion | The Alt-Right Manipulated My Comic. Then A.I. Claimed It. - The New York Times - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...w-algorithim-took-my-work.html

AI identity abuse exploitation creator

shared by Javier E on 05 Feb 23 - No Cached
  • Legally, it appears as though LAION was able to scour what seems like the entire internet because it deems itself a nonprofit organization engaging in academic research. While it was funded at least in part by Stability AI, the company that created Stable Diffusion, it is technically a separate entity. Stability AI then used its nonprofit research arm to create A.I. generators first via Stable Diffusion and then commercialized in a new model called DreamStudio.
  • hat makes up these data sets? Well, pretty much everything. For artists, many of us had what amounted to our entire portfolios fed into the data set without our consent. This means that A.I. generators were built on the backs of our copyrighted work, and through a legal loophole, they were able to produce copies of varying levels of sophistication.
  • eing able to imitate a living artist has obvious implications for our careers, and some artists are already dealing with real challenges to their livelihood.
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  • Greg Rutkowski, a hugely popular concept artist, has been used in a prompt for Stable Diffusion upward of 100,000 times. Now, his name is no longer attached to just his own work, but it also summons a slew of imitations of varying quality that he hasn’t approved. This could confuse clients, and it muddies the consistent and precise output he usually produces. When I saw what was happening to him, I thought of my battle with my shadow self. We were each fighting a version of ourself that looked similar but that was uncanny, twisted in a way to which we didn’t consent.
  • In theory, everyone is at risk for their work or image to become a vulgarity with A.I., but I suspect those who will be the most hurt are those who are already facing the consequences of improving technology, namely members of marginalized groups.
  • In the future, with A.I. technology, many more people will have a shadow self with whom they must reckon. Once the features that we consider personal and unique — our facial structure, our handwriting, the way we draw — can be programmed and contorted at the click of a mouse, the possibilities for violations are endless.
  • I’ve been playing around with several generators, and so far none have mimicked my style in a way that can directly threaten my career, a fact that will almost certainly change as A.I. continues to improve. It’s undeniable; the A.I.s know me. Most have captured the outlines and signatures of my comics — black hair, bangs, striped T-shirts. To others, it may look like a drawing taking shape.I see a monster forming.
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