My parents were in the tech business, so I always had computers growing up. In the late 1980s, we had a Commodore 64, the original Macintosh (which was released the same year as my birth), a pre-Windows PC running DOS, among other devices. I learned to type at a very young age, and that is a proficiency I keep to this day. (My parents thought it would be fun if I typed an electronic journal, like Doogie Howser.) I quickly realized how typing was, in many ways, superior to handwriting. One of my biggest frustrations with handwriting was the editing process. I would write a draft, then review it for errors, then have to rewrite the entire document from scratch, only to write from scratch all over again if there were more errors. Even in elementary school, this iterative process struck me as waste of time. With word processing, that entire process became unnecessary. I could make any necessary edits, and just click "print" again.
In 1995 or so, I had a disagreement with my fifth grade teacher. He required us to write all of our papers by hand. I wanted to type my papers. He replied (and I'm paraphrasing three decades later), "When you grow up, you won't be able to type everything, so you will need to learn how to handwrite." I grumbled, and acquiesced. Three decades later, my beloved teacher has been proven wrong. I almost never handwrite. I rarely ever touch a pen, other than to sign a receipt or write a greeting card.
Still, I acknowledge my dependency on word processing had consequences. My penmanship was not very good. And because I typed from such an early age, it never became important to improve my penmanship. On my report card, penmanship was consistently my lowest grade–"Needs Improvement" on the old New York City public school rubric. I at least learned how to write in cursive–even if my penmanship was poor. And, I can still read cursive script–a useful skill when reviewing archival documents. Likewise, I grew up with spellcheck. I never had to perfect my spelling, because I could always turn to that useful tool. (Readers of this blog will attest to my poor spelling). Grammar check came around later, but–to this day–it is not very useful. And I came of age just as the internet was booming. Plus we had Microsoft Encarta electronic encyclopedias. Information was usually a few clicks away. My seventh grade teacher criticized me for only using online resources for my research paper. Sensing a pattern? I never really needed to use actual books for research. To this day, I cannot find my way around a library. And so on.
