In a near future, a team of desktop computer designers are looking at the latest telemetry and updating the schematics of the hardware-as-a-service self-assembling nanohardware.
Steve: "Hmm, they don't seem to be using the power button very often."
Bob: "Compared to the other buttons, it's only used 0.1% of the time"
Steve: "Remove it?"
Bob: "Remove it!"
Computers now instantly boot up when plugged into the wall, and run until the plug is pulled. No more start-up time, the cases are aesthetically cleaner, and manufacturing cost is down at least a fraction of a dollar.
Confident with this success, they turn their attention to the keyboard.
Steve: "Have you noticed that most letters the users type are lower case? Only in rare instances are they in upper case!"
Bob: "Hmm, but sometimes it may be useful to write in upper case too."
Steve: "Let's compromise and put the shift and capslock keys in a little hatch on the back of the keyboard for a test group, maybe that's enough for the power users. That will clean up the keyboard design for everyone else..."
Bob: "Done! And deployed!"
this is just great, who is going to bother turning their keyboard over just to write an upper case letter?
steve: "now the usage has dropped to 0.000001% in the test group! see, nobody needs those keys!"
bob: "wow! you were right, let's push a patch immediately to remove them for everyone!"
steve: "now i'm looking at the punctuation, they're also a lot more rare than the letters"
bob: "put them in the hatch on the back?"
steve: "sure"
alright i guess this is how it is now xxxx we'll adapt
steve xxx you know im looking at these letter distributions and most letters seem to be in the group xxx etaoinshrdlu xxx
bob xxx youre right xxx who knew two thirds of the alphabet was redundant xxx imagine how clean the keyboard would be with less than twenty keys
steve xxx i wanna xxx lets just do it
bob xxx the design is going to be so minimalist and clean after this xxx not even jobs thought this far outside the box
i ant euen estress hou hrustratin this data driuen desin nonsense is use isnt usefulness interoetatin data is really dittioult
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This post seems to have resonated with people. There's a discussion here, among other places:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30421399
Reach me at kontakt@marginalia.nu