

4 sucky things about this $19 piece of junk that make it amazing for writing - milesf
http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/portable-word-processor/

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milesf
Lots of little gold nuggets in here:

\- technology hasn’t made it any easier to concentrate, and actually write.

\- If a computer is a “bicycle for the mind,” then a computer connected to the
internet is a bumper car for the mind.

\- The most important thing that gets produced in most first drafts isn’t so
much the writing itself, but the connections you build in your brain.

Great piece of writing. Obviously a result of his AlphaSmart 3000 ;) If you're
going to build a great company, you need great writing. Not just to
communicate to customers, investors, and your troops. You need it to grow your
thinking (aka connections you build in your brain).

Education seems to foster terrible writing, because the focus is on words
("give me 500 words on..."). Good writing is focussed on developing good
thinking.

~~~
stuxnet79
Yes, I totally agree with you. I never got the logic of directives like, write
a 20 page report on such and such etc. I'd rather have the instructions be
something like 'ensure that your final report has X, Y and Z'. Although I
suppose if you don't provide a lower limit on the number of pages you are
expecting, this will encourage laziness on the part of the students.

Basically ever since I started writing in a professional capacity, I have had
an issue of 'writing too much' and not being concise. I suspect this is due to
the school system, and its incessant focus on word and page counts.

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panglott
Oh, man, they're discontinued, but I guess of course they are. I remember
shopping around for an AlphaSmart 10 years ago and never bought one.

Now all my ideas for Raspberry Pi projects are things like "build an
AlphaSmart."

~~~
copperx
Throw in Emacs/vim keybindings and you got a stew going.

