Metric system. Notice how hard a time we Americans have with the metric system. I would like to see the US adopt immersion techniques concerning the metric system. Many of Canada's school systems adopted immersion techniques to cross-train in their two official languages. To learn the opposite language you are trained to immerse yourself in it; you start one and stop the other. This may be the best way to change to things like the metric system.

Esperanto. Some people speak Esperanto as their first language; children of parents who speak Esperanto at home. These children have to go to considerable trouble learning the other less rational local language. The same would be true of people who learn the Dvorak keyboard first, they would then have to learn the old.

Cybernation. During the sixties we used to talk about cybernation. Automation would put a lot of people out of work, but if you look at it from a different perspective, fewer people would be needed to do the work of society and much time would be freed up. With the newly found time, people could engage it art, music, literature on one level (the highest), entertainment, amusement, recreation, spectator and participator sports (the middle level), and on the low level, idleness, violence, drug and alcohol abuse. What does this have to do with the Dvorak keyboard? The new keyboard could play a part in creating the time saved to develop middle and higher level pursuits, and to eradicate lower level ones.

My own hunch is that cybernation will happen in the future. Since the sixties the idea has been set back thanks to the strong work ethic that refuses to disappear . . the idea that every individual should maintain a high paying job and contribute to overall wealth. And foreign competition keeps forcing us to churn out products. Take the Japanese! In Japan, many people literally work themselves to death . . millions of people working 80-90 hours a week, and for what? Does it really take all those people-hours to manufacture that stuff? Even Stateside, look at all the hours people work. Millions of people working 50-60-70 hours a week. Does it really take all that work to keep us supplied with our cars, houses, toys? I think not. In the 50s, we had as much or more fun, with essentially the same consumer items as now, with half the work force.

If you were around in the 1960s you would hear much about meaningful work. A goal in life was to have meaningful work. The problem is that when work is divided up among the whole population, there isn't that much meaningful work . . a whole lot of work is non-essential, probably most of it. But we are forced to keep at it in order to compete in the global market and, besides, some contend that work must continue if only for the sake of the work ethic. This, I think, in changing. With mergers and with the downsizing trend we may be seeing the start of change to a better way of life -- if we don't screw it up.

Advantages and disadvantages

Unfortunately, there are a few disadvantages with which Dvorak users must live:

• It is based on English as spoken in 1934.

• Better layouts or maybe an altogether different type of data entry system ultimately may be developed.

• Dvorak is more involved than I originally thought. It takes the 40 hours (1 hour a day for 40 days) to learn the basics, but then it may take several months to really become fluent on both layouts.

• When I started, I had visions of giving high-speed demonstrations with plenty of sizzle in the American fashion of selling the sizzle, not the steak. Features such as less fatigue, fewer errors, and a noticeable (but not that spectacular) rise in wpm are not enough to grab the public. Oh, I'll be giving high-speed demonstrations all right, but they're a little further down the road than I thought.

Believe it or not, I think I have found a few advantages with the old keyboard:

• It is one of the few things in life that favors left-handers. The only other left-sided activity I can think of off hand is, in some cases, guitar playing.

• Flying fingers. Your fingers really fly when you're typing the old way. Having your fingers flying all over the place might have even been part of the gadget mystique back in the early days. A lot of people were put to work at a time when jobs were badly needed.

• Rarely used keys (j, q, k, et cetera) are posted in good places and not out of reach when you do need them. Common letters are in hard to reach places but used frequently; it's not that much of a problem to get to them. With the new keyboard, you need to type fast in order for the rarely used keys to occur often enough to gravitate to them easily.

• It's just a guess, but maybe the old keyboard is good exercise for fingers - with all that excess motion, although I have never heard of a tennis or golf coach suggesting their students resume their excess motion habits just for exercise value.