Rich Gioscia
Director of design, PalmOne
I can see that happening. I'm not sure time spent typing literally deteriorates the muscle memory of handwriting - the skill appears to be like bicycle riding, learned and never forgotten. But the speed of typing leads to a sense of urgency, of rushing things. It may even get worse when we have things like voice recognition and speech-to-text input at our disposal.
Lisa Marnell
Director, HandwritingHelpforKids.com
Fourth- and fifth-grade kids are learning keyboarding when they would've been honing cursive writing, which is much faster than block printing. Note-taking becomes extremely unpleasant if they go off to a high school with just two or three computers per classroom. Also, many younger kids are starting school without the hand strength they need to write well - holding a mouse or playing with a Game Boy simply doesn't develop fine motor skills.
Edward Tenner
Author, Our Own Devices: The Past and Future of Body Technology
Much everyday 19th-century handwriting was bad. But people had clerks who wrote in standardized scripts, or they did so themselves when necessary. Contemporary cursive tends to be all draft mode except on formal occasions, often delegated to calligraphers. Laser-printed uniformity has become meaningless because it can be achieved so cheaply. Today's recipient cares less that a personal note is half-legible than that it has been handwritten at all.
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