Afternoon all.
Not sure if this is the right forum - the forum descriptions are a touch vague.
anyway, to business. Was reading Cecil’s “More of the Straight Dope” (Can we cannonise this man?) and found his Dvorak Keyboard … error (there. I said it. Error.) I’m glad to see that Cecil, in his infinite wisdom, has uncovered this obviously deliberate plan to decieve him, and been shown the light http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_248.html
However, I have regretted the lack of direct references he uses (at least in the books I’ve read - as an Aussie, it’s hard to pick up his gems of wisdom in a newspaper). to this end, I offer the orriginal article he recieved (by S. J. LIEBOWITZ and STEPHEN E. MARGOLIS) that I was orriginally going to give to Cecil, but, being as behind as I am, I offer it (and it’s copious references) instead to the Teeming Millions, so that they might do their own research occasionally, and lift from Cecil perhaps some of the burden of being the “World’s Smartest Human Being”. http://wwwpub.utdallas.edu/~liebowit/keys1.html
An issue of Discover magazine (4/97) had
an article by Jared Diamond that basically
vectors the UL. The Reason article disagrees with the Diamond article in some statements of fact. These should be easy to track down (for instance, the Diamond article claims that speed records are held by Dvorak typists.)
The Reason article is suspicious because almost all of the studies that it cites are retraining (going from QWERTY to Dvorak). Also, the authors approach the UL from the standpoint of economics, using their debunking of the UL to buttress their own economic theory. The authors are not motion study experts. They are free-market advocates who view the dvorak legend as the work of the enemy.
The question that they are really answering is: “do we live in a QWERTY world?” That question is also expressed as “Can market pressure force out a superior product?” That is what is being “bunked and debunked.” There are some powerful and vested economic (and political) interests involved here.
But the reason the free-market advocates are doing this in the first place is that regulation advocates are using the Dvorak legend in support of their cause. Your point is basically valid, that when trying to research the lowdown on the legend, you run into articles with political motivations that go beyond the objective science. But your statement makes it seem like the Libertarians are being sneaky, trumpeting a science/history story that supports their cause, when really they’re debunking the academic underpinnings of the other side.