We think of keyboards as "technology" with all the futuristic connotations of that word, but in reality keyboards are storied cultural artifacts shaped by human history. Every key, every character has a story.
What could you understand about a culture, or about a people simply by examining their most popular tools?
@futurebird it's certainly not some obvious thing that fell out of the sky, early computers had this problem of "how do we get information in and out of these things?", and just about all the attempts people made at this where people looking around at all the other technology they had at the time, and repurposing it for computers. it's "obvious" that the keyboard came from typewriters somehow, but the less obvious part is how the screen on top of the keyboard is a replacement of a replacemnt of typewriter paper. the typewriter interface still silently shape so many small details of how computers work today, especially under the hood. it's good to know this history so you have context for how the present works.
a different society might have invented something else entirely, and/or converged at a similar thing from a different direction.
Oct 17, 2026, 12:09 PM@bnuuy @futurebird If I may, this is the focus of a very important book
"On the mode of existence of technical Objects" by Gilbert Simondon
He studies technique as a cultural artifact, or rather as the interface between culture and nature
Very pertinent for today, notably as an early critic of cybernetics
A PDF of an English translation is easily found online