What interface was that?

I’ve been peering at this Scripting News post about cell phones all day, trying to figure out what struck me as weird about it. I finally figured it out. Check this quote:

“So why not make them just a teensy bit bigger and put a real qwerty keyboard on the darn thing and let me type into it like a human being.”

That seemed totally reasonable to me the first zillion times I read it. I just went out and got a Sidekick, cause I wanted a keyboard on my cell phone. But wait — “like a human being.” He wants a keyboard-based interface, cause he wants to use the cell phone for more than just the classic telephonic voice based interface. “Like a human being.”

Humans aren’t stuck with just talking. To be human is to have access to a keyboard!

So it’s weird, but he’s also right. We are the tool using ape. Keyboards are a very nice symbol that says “digital tool here.”