


In a much-read essay, Maria Konnikova cites several studies revealing what’s lost when people replace handwriting with a keyboard. At Indiana University, for example, psychologist Karin James showed preliterate children a letter on an index card and asked them to reproduce it by tracing, drawing on blank paper or typing on a computer.

The children were put under a brain scanner and shown the letter again. Those who had drawn the letter freehand, Konnikova writes, “exhibited increased activity in three areas of the brain that are activated in adults when they read and write.” Those who traced or typed were far less so affected.






The great vegetarian food writer Deborah Madison calls hands “your most important tool,” followed by an ordinary sharp knife. “Food processed in a machine never reveals the hand of the cook,” she writes. “I always find it much more interesting to see the person in the way he or she cuts vegetables; it’s one of the things that makes hands-on cooking so vital.”

Like much else, sewing machines are now computerized. The upscale models come with a wide repertory of embroidery stitches. Who does embroidery by hand these days? Only a few. Sadly, the machine-embroidered product doesn’t hold a candle to hand embroidery, with its human imperfections.



Speaking of apes, modern humans hold dominion over the other hominids because of our manual dexterity and attendant brain development. What will happen to a species that equips its toddlers with iPads? Can’t say. But if Bigfoot ever learns to write thank-you notes, we may all be in trouble.

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