Comment from Martin Taylor
Keyboards have a great advantage over any conceivable perfect speech recognition system--nobody can hear what you type, and your data entry doesn't interfere with that of somebody else in the same...
View ArticleComment from Bob Chisholm
You should tell Mr. Tyson that the X-1 was not an airplane. It used a rocket engine, not a jet.Good piece though. Thanks.
View ArticleComment from Steve D
For years I taught a course on the history of technology and gave the most hated writing assignment on campus: Why are technologies like suspension bridges considered beautiful and those like strip...
View ArticleComment from Adam Engst
I should have caught that too in editing - added a parenthetical to fend off other comments. :-)
View ArticleComment from Steve Nicholson
I think you forgot to delete a paragraph during editing. You have two paragraphs that begin "This argument is especially of interest to users of Apple technologies" and have "free-market, Balkanized...
View ArticleComment from Adam Engst
Drat! I was putting some new text in place and forgot to replace the paragraph I was comparing to. Fixed now. Thanks!
View ArticleComment from Chris Kohuch
while we're on editing... "users of Apple technologies, whom might arguably appreciate aesthetics more than the general public" -> "... who ... ", no?
View ArticleComment from Adam Engst
Man, it was not my day. Most editing mistakes happen when you fix something else in the sentence and then end up with a problem because of not changing the rest of the sentence to match.
View ArticleComment from Steve Harmony
The X-1 was an airplane. A rocket-powered airplane, but it fits the definition of "airplane." For instance, from Dictionary.app "a powered flying vehicle with fixed wings and a weight greater than that...
View ArticleComment from artMonster
It may be an off day, but thank God for editors! Truth be told, Tidbits has better editing than The New York Times.
View ArticleComment from Hippo
I was thinking the same thing, my best bet for a replacement is likely 20-30 years away with nanobots that first used for medical diagnosis, are quickly reappropriated for brain computer interface, in...
View ArticleComment from wwilson083
I've met Neil Tyson and had a conversation with him. What you see on TV is what you get: he's a really good guy who is really smart and has a lot of insight. I differ from his opinion that space mining...
View ArticleComment from WRJB
On topic, I think....The 'coolest' car ever made was Carroll Shelby's Ford Cobra. This year is it's Fiftieth anniversary and it is still, by far, the coolest, most beautiful vehicle on four wheels ever...
View ArticleComment from Jeff Porten
Speaking for myself only: my understanding is that there are massive amounts of raw materials out there which could mean an effective end to economic scarcity, and water is certainly among them. There...
View ArticleComment from Jeff Porten
Having never learned to drive, I'm looking at any Google self-driving car as the next "coolest car" I'd like to see in production.
View ArticleComment from Jerome Kornfield
Neil spends most of his time looking at the impact of real hard science on humankind. I spent a fair amount of time listening and questioning him on these topics, not to mention astrophysics. His view...
View ArticleComment from Doug Hall
Interesting article. There was a time when writing skills were anticipated to become obsolete? Where was I when this happened? That would have been considered heresy in my English classes. Typing -...
View ArticleComment from Doug Hall
The fact that texting has become popular is interesting. It is a technology where people use an even smaller, more complicated typing mechanism, and sometimes pay far more to use it than for a simple...
View ArticleComment from Doug Hall
Why don't you just wait for teleportation. After all, it's probably right around the corner. ;-)
View ArticleComment from Adam Engst
Yes, Jeff is more optimistic about voice recognition than I am. Keyboard entry of one sort or other is indeed popular because it's essentially private, whereas voice never can be. I'm also uncertain...
View ArticleComment from Jeff Porten
This was in the late 80s/early 90s. The premise was that with the advent of cell phones, no one would write each other anymore, and people were already showing drops in using the postal service to send...
View ArticleComment from Jeff Porten
My argument is with constructions like "fast enough". That's exactly what Tyson was talking about. Yes, fast enough to become ubiquitous, but now that we *have* them, we *settle* for that speed and...
View ArticleComment from Doug Hall
Then you're either incredibly smart or a very bad typist. My brain is my bottleneck. I spend much more time reading and thinking than I do typing. I'm not a touch typist, but generally, my typing...
View ArticleComment from Joe Smith
Barbarian. The Spitfire was the most beautiful airplane ever built. (The P-38 is in second place.)
View ArticleComment from Tracy W
I agree. I am a touch typist (the computer games available when I was a kid were very boring), and my typing skills far surpass the ability of my mind to generate words. With Bluetooth headsets, my...
View ArticleComment from Jimmy LT
"Likewise, the example of other nations demonstrates (to me, anyway) that our free-market, Balkanized approach to cellular technology is part of what keeps us from having best-in-class wireless...
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