Expertise in the Age of YouTube
In college I met a friend who had a MacBook whose keyboard layout was assembled using the Dvorak layout (this was in 2009). Roll forward a couple of years and I had met another friend who used his OS to map QWERTY to Dvorak. Inspired, I spent a few days during Christmas break learning a new keyboard layout. It&#x27;s still what I use today.<p>Roll forward a couple of more years and I&#x27;m working on my Ph.d. and have the thought that someone must have done more optimization on keyboard layouts: Meet <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;mkweb.bcgsc.ca&#x2F;carpalx" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;mkweb.bcgsc.ca&#x2F;carpalx</a>. That inspired me to learn QFMLWY, something I have yet to do.<p>Roll forward to a few months ago and I&#x27;m experiencing some slight wrist pain; a coworker uses a Kinesis Advantage and recommends it. In true punk style (and unhappy with the Kinesis&#x27; outdated appearence), I endeavor to find a superior product. I stumble upon the Ergodox EZ, a fully-featured workhorse. I quickly become frustrated at my reduced typing speed and seek out a better solution. Cue Plover and the OpenStenography project. Learning stenographic typing is my next life goal.<p>This is a niche path involving one skill set: Improving the human-keyboard interface. And, it involved real-world interaction with people and the resources that people on the internet have provided. I&#x27;m convinced that either only in-real-life (IRL) or only online interactions would have inhibited my growth in this domain.<p>I&#x27;m sure that this same concept applies to every web development framework or conlang or beauty style or any human endeavor. As an aside: These ideas are also related to why I&#x27;m confident that an artificial general intelligence developed in the vacuum of the internet will not succeed relative to a competing technology that is able to benefit from both offline, interactive experiences and also online information trawling.