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I'm a multitasker, and when typing I use my peripheral vision to keep
track of where my fingers are while focusing my main attention on the
screen. I've found that I type just as quickly (ok, close, anyway) and
accurately with my eyes-more-on-keyboard finger-pecking style,
honed by hundreds
of
hours spent playing ping-pong, as some of the
'better educated' ten-finger typists in the office. I know I'm not the
only one here who types that way. It's not a weaker method, just
different, like different styles of martial arts.
Anyway, I got thinking today about ways to use speech-to-text
technology to train scribes, like those employed in courtrooms.
Speech-to-text is not used in courtrooms yet because people don't
want to trust such vital tasks as legal transcription to something that's
relatively untested for something that absolutely must be accurate.
My idea, however, is to use speech-to-text to take advantage of the
finger-pecker's tendency to look more at the keyboard than the screen
by synching with a special keyboard that lights up the keys in the
proper sequence to spell out the words being spoken by the person for
whom the scribe is transcribing. This would be an especially useful tool
for transitioning from keyboards with different layouts, such as later-
model IBM devices.
Stenotype machine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stenotype
Hmmm... blinkenlights v. 375 wpm? [lurch, Oct 24 2009]
[link]
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I'm not sure I get it. If your text-to-speech is that good, why bother typing at all? If you're going to learn to type, why learn to be a better hunt-and-peck typist? |
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Because they're not legal to replace scribes in court yet. That's
why, rather than propose a let's-all law change, I'm suggesting a
method of training scribes differently. There are different ways
to do all sorts of things that are accepted in their industry... why
can there only be one way to type? |
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Ah, when you said "scribes" I thought you were being poetic. I didn't realize you were referring to court reporters/recorders. |
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I thought court reporters used some sort of chording shorthand thing. |
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Possibly. But why must there be only one way to type it out? As
long as the final result is the same, why mandate the method?
People type in different ways. Even some professional typists
don't keep their eyes entirely on the screen, as it's only natural
to take an occasional peek at what you're doing. Why not
provide a visual aid that takes advantage of this very human
tendency to produce a better result, rather than dogmatically
demanding that everyone do it the same? That doesn't make
people better typists. It makes them robots, and need I point out
the very many drawbacks of robots?
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I run into this problem at work. I'm a tech support guy for a
large wireless phone provider, and the majority of my work
consists of troubleshooting problems with customers' services
and devices. A lot of problems can be identified immediately
when the customer tells me what problems they're having. For
instance, if you tell me your phone can't send text messages, but
it receives incoming SMS ok, then 9 times out of 10 the problem
is that *somebody* has gone into the phone's settings and
altered the Message Center number that's programmed into the
phone. So that's the first thing I check when a customer has that
issue. Yet I got in trouble a few days ago for doing that because
we are expected to rigidly adhere to a troubleshooting technical
guide in the computer, that lays out the steps in the order we're
supposed to check things in, meaning they want us to check the
account to make sure you have the right messaging plan, then
they want us to check and see if there's anything wrong with the
towers in your area. Then they want us to see if there are any
network-wide outages affecting you. Then they want us to have
you turn off your phone, cancel its registration with the network,
then turn it back on and try to send out a text message, and if it
still doesn't work, *then* check the
phone's settings. And if we do anything out of order, we get in
trouble for it. Even if the issue is resolved on the very first step.
And all the while, they badger us to get each customer off the
phone as fast as possible to keep our average handle time down.
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Despite the fact that it's a tech support job, we aren't rated on
how many problems we fix and how fast we fix them. We're
rated on how strictly we follow the Guide and how fast we get
the customer off the line. And that is the kind of dogmatic
bullshit that this solution is intended to do away with.
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(Note: that's not to say, of course, that there's anything wrong
with cyborgs! They're cool in my book.) |
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"I thought court reporters used some sort of chording shorthand thing."
That's my understanding too, and I believe the chording is just like shorthand. That is, every person can create their own "lingo" as long as they're consistent with it and can interpret it. |
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Well yes, but when you take a compentency test for a typist
position, they see you not using the 'proper' 10 finger method
and dismiss you right away. I'm seeking to legitimize a perfectly
viable method of typing with a training product designed
specifically for it. |
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some two-finger typists can get up to 60wpm, but that's basically where touch-typists start. |
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