Rebelling against the QWERTY System

Created during the era of the typewriter, the standard keyboard layout QWERTY was designed with the intent of adapting to the typewriter's needs. When typists rapidly hit adjacent keys on the typewriter, these keys would tend to jam the typewriter. To address this issue, QWERTY was designed to increase space between keys that were frequently used successively and to place keys in awkward positions to slow typing speed, reducing the likelihood of jams.

However, with the advent of the modern computing keyboard, which does not involve keys that can physically jam, the QWERTY design is now obsolete and inefficient. A new keyboard design, Dvorak, has been created with the purpose of maximizing typing ease and speed, better serving the needs of the modern, computer-using society.


Despite this, QWERTY continues to dominate the keyboard market due to a problem that we economics people refer to as "coordination failure of strategic complementarities". The basic premise behind it is quite simple: unless a significant portion of the market chooses to switch to the new product at once, it would not be economically viable for an individual to switch. Even though the cost curve for the new product may be further left than that of the old product, under current market conditions, the actual cost of the new product would still be higher since the new product operates on a different section of the cost curve than the old product does. With Dvorak, the costs of the actual keyboards are higher and the costs of training everybody to use the new keyboard would be higher. Nobody uses Dvorak because it is expensive and it is expensive because nobody uses it. This is an example of a form of market failure that cannot be fixed without government assistance (despite what supply-siders say), though I do concede that Dvorak is not significant enough of an issue to ask for such assistance.


I feel that this issue is actually similar to (although less important than) the issue of open source software, which also requires government assistance to be successfully and ubiquitously implemented. But I will save that rant for another day since my blog entry is already becoming rather long.

Anyway, my friend and I decided to defy market forces and learn to use Dvorak anyway (on a remapped QWERTY keyboard) so that we can become more efficient typists. It is quite a difficult process, however, since the Dvorak layout is so different from what I am accustomed to, forcing me to think about each key I use. With QWERTY, I type at approximately 120 words per minute (last time I checked, which was quite a long time ago). With Dvorak, I type at 9 words per minute (no joke). I do feel quite inadequate at the moment, but, hopefully, I will become more efficient at typing with Dvorak with more practice. If not, at least we will be able to have fun confusing our less computer-literate friends while typing because the letters that appear on our monitors will not correspond with the letters on the keys that we use. :D

By the way, for practice, we are using this website. You guys should too. :)

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