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posted by cmn32480 on Thursday July 09 2015, @10:02AM   Printer-friendly
from the where's-my-pencil dept.

From a recent issue of Wired:

Study after study shows we remember things better when we write them—our brain stores the letter-writing motion, which is much more memorable than just the mashing of a key that feels like every other key. We think in fragments, too, in shapes and colors and ideas that just don't come through on a keyboard. "Think about how many things that are built start as a drawing," Bathiche says. "Most things, right? Everything you're wearing probably started as a drawing."

You can't type out the folds of a dress, or the gentle curves of a skyscraper. Drawing with your stubby finger on a touchscreen isn't much better. Humans are tool-based creatures: Our fingers can do amazingly intricate things with a pen, a brush, or a scalpel, that we can't replicate with a mouse or the pads of our fingers. Our computers are giving back that kind of detailed control. In turn, the pen is opening up new ways of digital expression, new tools for communication, new ways to interact with our tech.

My wife's cousin's husband is a cartoonist for the New Yorker. He uses a high-end Wacom digitizer. Hasn't the problem of the high tech pen been solved?


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by cosurgi on Thursday July 09 2015, @12:01PM

    by cosurgi (272) on Thursday July 09 2015, @12:01PM (#206928) Journal

    Hi-tech pen, no matter how high tech will never beat the regular pen. Unless the "hi-tech" only means seamless digital recording of what you are doing. No kind of tablet has ever achieved that. Say that I'm in a bus, and suddenly an idea strikes my mind that I need to write down, or draw it. I grab the pen from my pocket and a scrap of paper. I can't imagine with current technology any kind of hi-tech pen, that would work here. No electricity, no computer around. Just me and my pen & paper.

    Besides, it's not just buildings or clothes that start as drawings.

    When I write high-level C++ code, and I encounter some obstacle I grab my trusty pen and draw the diagrams to identify dependencies and solve it. There is no UML in the world that would be faster than pen & paper.

    When I calculate some physics formula, yes, I do use mathematica - but usually only to verify my calculations. Which I have done - guess what? Using pen & paper.

    The pen & paper helps you to focus. The computer is an endless distraction.
     

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  • (Score: 2) by ah.clem on Thursday July 09 2015, @01:30PM

    by ah.clem (4241) on Thursday July 09 2015, @01:30PM (#206960)

    I used to do a lot of music composition and arranging by hand. I will still do a quick sketch using a fountain pen and manuscript paper, then use a MIDI keyboard to play the parts into Finale. I grew up using fountain pens (yeah, old guy) and I have used them excusively for the last 30 years on a daily basis. To me, nothing beats the feeling of a really good fountain pen moving on a decent piece of paper. Of course, the world has mostly gone to cheap ballpoints, so paper requirements have gotten much lower; often, when filling out forms and such, I get a bit of "bleeding", and, of course, I have to always ask clerks to wait about 5 seconds for the ink to dry when I sign a receipt (generally responded to with either a "deer in headlights" look, or a subtle eyeroll - who knew 5 seconds was now too long to wait for something? [chuckle]). A rollerball is OK, but nothing is as smooth as a well-tuned nib. If you have never tried one, I highly recommend it.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 09 2015, @03:24PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 09 2015, @03:24PM (#207004)

    I always carry a pen with me (a bullet-style Fisher Space Pen), but I also always carry a Galaxy Note.
    The pen easily beats the phone in terms of usability for collaborative uses.
    The phone easily beats the pen for ease of organizing notes and annotating pictures/websites/whatever.

    A digital pen will probably never beat a real pen at being a pen, but it doesn't have to in order to be useful. Specialized tools have their uses and they don't have to replace general-purpose tools.