And you thought talking about the intersection of comics and politics was geeky?
There’s a mini-comic that’s been published to the web about the history of the Dvorak keyboard layout.
I myself retrained myself to type with this layout about fifteen years ago, ticking off everyone who wants to use my computer, when the keys they hit don’t produce the letters they’re “supposed” to represent.
I guess this could be geekier. You could somehow take the Dvorak keyboard and turn it into a metaphor in economic and political discussions…
Nah, no one’s that wierd… Oh, who am I kidding:
- Mises Institute on Dvorak & “market failure”
- Reason Magazine on how such market failure arguments fail
- The “Qwerty Myth“
- The “Fable of the Keys“
- and a discussion about market lock-in, including a comparison between the Qwerty keyboard and the AK-47 rifle (!?) over at Unqualified Offerings [Link lost to the internet as of 2019-08-29]
In that last item I add to the discussion in the comments thread
The market wins as all points of view have their freedom to use the keyboard layout of their choice.
Which of course exposes the whole fraud of using Qwerty vs. Dvorak and other comparisons as a barometer of wether or not markets are successful or not. The point of markets isn’t to provide “The one true solution”. Which is why it pisses me off that free market advocates fall into this trap and feel that they have to defend Qwerty and bash Dvorak in order to defend markets. (The same thing has been done with Windows vs. Mac time and time again)
There you have it: Comics, keyboards, computers, politics, and economics. The only thing holding this out of contention for geekiest post ever would be a lolcat.
Lord help me, it was only a Google search away…