20 October 2016

Ambidextrocity – Nature’s Scourge

Have computers rendered the second hand unnecessary?

by Chin Chin

However you look at it, nature has certainly made some mistakes. No I’m not talking about the people who come shouting out of the pub at midnight and leave glasses on our doorstep; nor about all those people across the Channel. They are all annoying, of course, but if we weren’t cursed with annoying people, we probably wouldn’t enjoy the better ones. In these instances I’m prepared to regard nature as having taken a long but benevolent view of our welfare.

No, the real mistakes concern numbers. Why, for example, do we have four fingers and a thumb on each hand? The Almighty must have known that it would inevitably result in our counting in tens, and ten is only divisible by two and five. If we had had five fingers and a thumb, or perhaps four fingers and two thumbs, on each hand, we would have counted in twelves, and twelve is a number divisible by two, three, four and six. Try designing a box to hold ten eggs and then a box to hold twelve eggs and you will soon see which is the most convenient system.

Still it isn’t just in the number of digits which has gone wrong, but also the number of hands. Two, is one too many. Oh, I can see that a second hand is a convenience if you are, for example, threading a needle, but, if we only had one hand, we would probably do that with our feet. In really important things, it is the quality the hands rather than number of them which is important. The “one-handed swordsman” is a hero of the Chinese cinema. Nelson won the battle of Trafalgar with one hand and one eye. The loss of a hand didn’t seem to impair his chances with the ladies either.

The obsolescence of the second hand becomes more obvious when you move to computers. Most of us are adept in the use of a mouse and that is so even where the screen is “split” between two different programs.

Last week, I had to copy some changes from one document into another and I decided that, rather than do it on one machine, I would place my laptop next to the office computer on the desk. That meant that I could scroll through the laptop, pick up the changes and typed them in on the desktop machine. The use of two computers, each with its own mouse, should make the process more efficient because I could operate both screens at once.

It sounds simple, doesn’t it? The two screens scrolling in harmony like lovers who cannot spell. The occasional “Hmm” when I spot something on the laptop which needs to be put in on the desktop computer. The refreshing sip of coffee as soon as I have made the change, by which time the cursor on the laptop, controlled by the other hand, is already slipping down the document searching, hawklike, for the next change. Two computers, two mouses, two keyboards, all controlled by two hands.

Yes, that’s how it should have been, but it wasn’t. In practice It proved impossible to keep in mind which mouse controlled which machine so I would move the laptop mouse and stare expectantly at the screen of the other computer. Then I would try to make an amendment on the desktop computer to find that I had accidentally used the keyboard on the laptop and erased the precedent I was supposed to be following. In fact I got it wrong so often that after a bit I thought it would be easier if I swapped the mouses over so that the mouse in my right hand controlled the screen to the left and vice versa. That worked reasonably well for about three minutes until I got one of the cords round the coffee cup, tipping a sweet and sickly brew over the desktop keyboard with which I was inserting the amendments.

I had always been told that you must not pour hot drinks over a keyboard because it will upset the electrics. Actually that isn’t the point at all. The electrics performed just fine. The difficulty was that, as the coffee dried, the sugar locked the keys in place so that you could only get them to operate by hitting them with the corner of a book and, once depressed, they had to be levered back up with the point of a biro. A great deal of foul language followed this operation, particularly when, having manoeuvred a particularly difficult key, I realised that I had merely meant to move something on the laptop which was controlled by the other keyboard.

Now if I’d only had one hand, or perhaps like a lobster one big hand and one very small one, I don’t think all this confusion would have arisen. What I am less clear about, however, is whether this inability to manipulate two mouses simultaneously affects the human race generally or whether it affects me alone.

You see, many years ago I tried to learn the piano and one of the fundamentals is that you have to be able to play a different part with each hand. The left hand, on the lower end of the keyboard, may be beating out “thump, thumpety-thump”, while the right hand is knocking out an elaborate melody. I could never get the hang of this so, although I played with great sensitivity, I was restricted to tunes where the two hands move up and down the keyboard at the same speed. There are pieces like that. Most of them are in the piano books for four-year-olds but there is a more sophisticated one by Beethoven and for many years that was my sole party piece.

“I do play a little,” I would say modestly after dinner, perhaps putting less emphasis on the word “a little” than was strictly fair.

“Oh, do play a piece for us.” would say some charming young lady in terms not to be denied and I would get up and walk to the keyboard with every sign of confidence.

“A little Beethoven, I think.” I would say and start off quickly before anyone had the chance to suggest anything else. The important thing, of course, was not to be asked for an encore but I had the answer to that. At the end of the piece I would rise with a slightly regretful expression on my face.

“When did you last have this piano tuned?” I would ask my host. Whatever the reply, the answer was the same:

“Ah, well, perhaps then it would be better if I left it at that.” The observation had the advantage of being entirely true, albeit carrying the implication that playing on an ill tuned instrument might somehow put me off balance and spoil my future performance – perhaps at the Albert Hall.

Now there clearly are people who can make their hands do different things on the piano and the worry is that their dexterity extends to handling two computers at the same time. That would be disheartening, but before being downcast perhaps I can test the matter. There is a lad at the office who rather fancies himself at the piano and I might ask him to make some amendments and then watch the fun. It will be annoying if he can do it. To reduce the chances of that, however, I will ask him to use the computer over which I spilt the coffee.

 

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