Speaker 1: Welcome to text Time, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tex Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech and it is a
Speaker 1: story time you guys. Now, those of you who follow
Speaker 1: my personal account over on Twitter, which is at John Strickland,
Speaker 1: it's j O. N. Strickland. If you're morbidly curious. Those
Speaker 1: of you who do follow me, you might know that
Speaker 1: I was eagerly anticipating the delivery of a Squire Classic
Speaker 1: Sixties Vibe Stratocaster, an electric guitar. And you know, I've
Speaker 1: done episodes about electric guitars, I've talked about them a lot,
Speaker 1: and I thought, I really want one of these. It
Speaker 1: would be really nice to have one. This would have
Speaker 1: been my first six string electric guitar. And I figured,
Speaker 1: since you know, I'm working from home now, it would
Speaker 1: be good to pick up a new skill to keep
Speaker 1: my mind sharp and occupied, and you know, to help
Speaker 1: me get into a sort of meditative state to help
Speaker 1: manage anxiety. By the way, um, anxiety is a real
Speaker 1: pain in the butt, and I recommend anyone who has
Speaker 1: anxiety to look into ways to manage it in a
Speaker 1: really healthy manner, because that stuff is no joke, and
Speaker 1: it's obviously getting more challenging to deal with that. Anyway,
Speaker 1: back to my story, I had been thinking about getting
Speaker 1: a guitar, and I wanted it to be a decent guitar,
Speaker 1: you know, something I would actually want to pick up
Speaker 1: and play. I didn't want to buy something super cheap
Speaker 1: and then find out I didn't like the feel of
Speaker 1: it or how it sounded, because that would discourage me
Speaker 1: from playing it. I would just set it down and
Speaker 1: never pick it up again. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: I also didn't want to go crazy and buy some
Speaker 1: sort of, you know, super expensive guitar, because guitars can
Speaker 1: get real expensive, y'all. I mean, what if I didn't
Speaker 1: like playing guitar just because I didn't like it? Right?
Speaker 1: What if I decided that I didn't enjoy playing. I
Speaker 1: am forty five years old this year, and skills just
Speaker 1: don't come to me as quickly as they used to.
Speaker 1: So it's entirely possible that I could become frustrated or
Speaker 1: I could become bored, even with a really nice guitar,
Speaker 1: and then just set it down and let it collect dust.
Speaker 1: So I would have wasted a lot of money on
Speaker 1: a really expensive decoration at that point, and that would
Speaker 1: be really irresponsible even in a good economic climate, let
Speaker 1: alone one as uncertain as the one we find ourselves
Speaker 1: in today. So I did what I do. I did
Speaker 1: a lot of research, like a lot of research. My
Speaker 1: wife was getting amused by how frequently I was watching
Speaker 1: videos about different guitars and different price ranges, weighing them, saying, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is gonna be a slightly less expensive guitar, which
Speaker 1: means it's going to have these sort of things that
Speaker 1: I'll have to consider. But but on the other hand,
Speaker 1: it's better than this other guitar, you know. I went
Speaker 1: through all of that. Ultimately I decided I wanted a
Speaker 1: strato caster, a classic electric guitar. The strato caster is
Speaker 1: made by Fender, and I really like the sound of
Speaker 1: strato casters now. I love stuff like surf rock, and
Speaker 1: Dick Dale, one of the most famous surf rock guitarists,
Speaker 1: played a strat But I also wanted to be financially
Speaker 1: responsible because there are a lot of different strato casters
Speaker 1: out there, and generally they mostly share a couple of
Speaker 1: common traits. Most strato casters have three single coil pickups,
Speaker 1: and the pickups are the components that pick up the
Speaker 1: vibration of the strings and then convert that into electric
Speaker 1: signals that can then feed out to an amplifier and speakers.
Speaker 1: Strats have three of these, typically one near the base
Speaker 1: of the neck of the guitar the neck pickup, one
Speaker 1: in the middle of the body of the guitar, and
Speaker 1: one towards the bridge of the guitar. A switch on
Speaker 1: the strat lets you select which pickup or which pair
Speaker 1: of pickups are active at any given time, and that
Speaker 1: changes the sound you get out of the guitar when
Speaker 1: it plays through an amplifier. But beyond these general similarities,
Speaker 1: there are a ton of different options. You can buy
Speaker 1: a starter entry level strat for less than two hundred dollars,
Speaker 1: or you could go bunkers and buy a mod shop
Speaker 1: guitar for around eight hundred dollars. So yeah, there is
Speaker 1: a range, and of course if you went full custom
Speaker 1: shop it could be way more expensive. So I looked
Speaker 1: into the Squire line of guitars. Now this is Fender's
Speaker 1: budget line, but they tend to measure up pretty well
Speaker 1: to guitars from the more prestigious official Fender line, particularly
Speaker 1: in the Squire Classic Vibe series, which are guitars they
Speaker 1: are designed to be closer to the style of the
Speaker 1: classic electric guitars of the fifties and sixties. Now, I'm
Speaker 1: left handed, and that's really what I'm going to get
Speaker 1: into in this episode, because being left handed means there
Speaker 1: are a lot of little struggles in your life. Most
Speaker 1: of the time, they aren't particularly meaningful or noteworthy. They
Speaker 1: tend to mostly be slightly frustrating at worst, and that's
Speaker 1: about it most of the time. So I want to
Speaker 1: stress from the beginning of this episode that the stuff
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk about is really not that big
Speaker 1: a deal in the grand scheme of things most of
Speaker 1: the time. But being left handed often means that when
Speaker 1: it comes to purchasing stuff where handedness is a factor,
Speaker 1: like guitars, you're faced with fewer options than you're right
Speaker 1: handed counterparts. For example, if you were to go to
Speaker 1: Fenders website the morning that I wrote this, and you
Speaker 1: were to look at the different options for electric guitars
Speaker 1: that they had in stock, you would see at that
Speaker 1: time that the company had one hundred eleven guitars for
Speaker 1: right handers in stock for left handers eight eight versus
Speaker 1: one hundred eleven. Now, typically a left hander has fewer options,
Speaker 1: and then fewer choices within those options, choices like the
Speaker 1: color of the guitar, for example. So while I could
Speaker 1: have loved a Candy Apple red left handed Squire Classic
Speaker 1: Sixties Vibes stratocaster, that was not an option. Nor could
Speaker 1: I get the lovely Lake Placid blue option that right
Speaker 1: handers could get. Those right handed versions had Candy Apple
Speaker 1: red and Lake Placid blue, but for left handers you
Speaker 1: didn't have a choice. There was only one color option, sunburst,
Speaker 1: which sadly is my least favorite of the three colors.
Speaker 1: But hey, them's the brakes. And while I wasn't in
Speaker 1: love with the color, I could live with it. And
Speaker 1: I did love all the things I read about the
Speaker 1: line of guitars, so I didn't really let that bother
Speaker 1: me so much. And before anyone pipes up about restringing
Speaker 1: a guitar so that you can convert a right handed
Speaker 1: guitar into a left handed guitar, yeah, I could technically
Speaker 1: have purchased a right handed Candy Apple red model, taking
Speaker 1: the strings off, taking the nut off, the top of
Speaker 1: the neck, flip the nut around, reinserted it, then restrung
Speaker 1: the guitar so that it was a left handed guitar.
Speaker 1: But that would also mean that all the controls for
Speaker 1: the guitar, like the volume and tone knobs and the
Speaker 1: tremolo or whammy bar would have been on the wrong side,
Speaker 1: and I would have to figure out how to deal
Speaker 1: with that in order to play it properly. So I
Speaker 1: wasn't really keen on trying to make a product that
Speaker 1: had been made for a right hander work for a
Speaker 1: left hander. I had a few gift cards for Amazon,
Speaker 1: not a sponsor, and that sealed the deal for me.
Speaker 1: I said, I'm gonna use these gift cards toward buying
Speaker 1: a guitar. I would buy a Squire Strato caster for
Speaker 1: four hundred dollars, which is not an insignificant sum of money,
Speaker 1: particularly if you're trying to stay economically responsible during a
Speaker 1: time of uncertainty. But with the gift cards, that would
Speaker 1: bring the price down to about half price, and I
Speaker 1: figured I would splurge on myself as sort of a
Speaker 1: late birthday present. I figured, if nothing else, I could
Speaker 1: consider it an investment in my mental health. I placed
Speaker 1: my order on a Saturday, and I was predicted to
Speaker 1: receive the guitar on the following Friday, so a week later. Now,
Speaker 1: over the course of that week, I grew a bit
Speaker 1: anxious because when I would check on the order status,
Speaker 1: it hadn't changed. It had registered order, but it never
Speaker 1: moved to shipping, let alone out for delivery. And then
Speaker 1: on that Friday that I was to receive it, July fourth,
Speaker 1: twenty that was the morning that I wrote this, I
Speaker 1: finally got an email that said my order had been
Speaker 1: canceled due to quote lack of availability end quote. Now,
Speaker 1: Amazon's system had said that there was only one of
Speaker 1: these guitars and stock, but apparently they just couldn't locate it,
Speaker 1: and so I did not get my guitar, though I
Speaker 1: did receive the accessories I had ordered. So now I've
Speaker 1: got a guitar stand and a guitar strap, but no
Speaker 1: guitar to go with it. Sad trombone. Now, I don't
Speaker 1: tell this story just because I'm bummed out and I
Speaker 1: want to grouse about it, though I admit that's definitely
Speaker 1: part of it. I want to talk about the problems
Speaker 1: that left handers face when it comes to certain technologies,
Speaker 1: and how those relatively minor problems can open the door
Speaker 1: to the realization and acknowledgement that other people face much
Speaker 1: more serious challenges when it comes to tech and bias
Speaker 1: and accessibility. And before I get into it too much,
Speaker 1: let's talk about why I'm not upset at Fender Guitars
Speaker 1: for this in general, I'm not even really upset at Amazon.
Speaker 1: I mean, when it comes down to one unit in
Speaker 1: all of Amazon, I imagine it's not that uncommon for
Speaker 1: something to appear in an online inventory, and yet you
Speaker 1: can actually track down the physical thing when someone places
Speaker 1: in order. You just can't figure out where it is
Speaker 1: in a warehouse somewhere. That's got to happen, you know,
Speaker 1: fairly frequently. The prevailing wisdom is that left handers make
Speaker 1: up about ten of the total population. Now that number
Speaker 1: is sometimes disputed. Some argue there are way more lefties
Speaker 1: than that, but the general consensus is that nine out
Speaker 1: of ten people are right handed. So if you are
Speaker 1: making products where handedness matters, it makes far more sense
Speaker 1: to dedicate your or focus on the right handers. They
Speaker 1: make up the bulk of the population, they represent your
Speaker 1: primary customers, and that will guide many of your other decisions.
Speaker 1: For example, if what you're making requires mass production, you
Speaker 1: have to create an assembly process, and that assembly process
Speaker 1: needs to be as efficient as possible. Efficiency relates to cost,
Speaker 1: so the more efficient you are able to make the
Speaker 1: production process, the less it costs to make the thing
Speaker 1: you're making, and that means you can be competitive in
Speaker 1: your pricing. When you put your product up on the
Speaker 1: market against products from other companies. You need to charge
Speaker 1: more than it costs to make so that you can
Speaker 1: make a profit. You don't want to sell things at
Speaker 1: a loss typically, but you can also be competitive against
Speaker 1: those other companies that are also making whatever it is
Speaker 1: you're making. But this means your assembly process needs to
Speaker 1: be fine tuned toward that product. You can imagine that
Speaker 1: there is an ideal version of whatever it is you're making.
Speaker 1: This is the model you're working off of. This is
Speaker 1: what you're trying to replicate every single time. So your
Speaker 1: goal is to produce stuff like guitars that match that
Speaker 1: model as much as possible. And with guitars made from wood,
Speaker 1: this is actually impossible. You're never going to have two
Speaker 1: guitars come out exactly the same because there's going to
Speaker 1: be variations in the wood. You'll be able to see
Speaker 1: and maybe even feel minor differences from guitar to guitar,
Speaker 1: even in the same line, even produced on the same day.
Speaker 1: But the goal is to get each guitar as close
Speaker 1: to this standard as you possibly can, and that means
Speaker 1: that the whole process needs to be precise, consistent, and
Speaker 1: easy to replicate. So the process works great as long
Speaker 1: as you're producing the same thing over and over. You'll
Speaker 1: get small variations, but in general you'll chug along and
Speaker 1: you'll build however many guitars as your facility can manage
Speaker 1: given the process of materials, as long as all these
Speaker 1: guitars require that same process. And that's where the left
Speaker 1: handed problem comes in. To make a left handed guitar,
Speaker 1: you need to flip everything a hundred eighty degrees. The
Speaker 1: string order is reversed, the headstock has to be flipped,
Speaker 1: the tuners will have to be on the opposite side
Speaker 1: of a right handed guitar. The controls like volume and tone,
Speaker 1: and the tremolo or wamy bar have to be on
Speaker 1: the opposite side. The pickguard has to be flipped. You
Speaker 1: get the idea. The real problem is you can't just
Speaker 1: flip a switch on the assembly line to go from
Speaker 1: right handed to left handed and have the whole process
Speaker 1: PLoP out ten left handed guitars for every one right
Speaker 1: handed guitars. It doesn't work that way. Instead, you either
Speaker 1: need a parallel assembly line just for left handed guitars,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't make much sense because you're never going
Speaker 1: to need to produce as many left handed guitars, or
Speaker 1: you have to retool your normal assembly process in order
Speaker 1: to occasionally produce some left handed models. Either way, producing
Speaker 1: a left handed guitar isn't as efficient as producing a
Speaker 1: right handed one, and that means it costs more to make.
Speaker 1: Now you could charge more for a left handed guitar,
Speaker 1: and some companies do, or you could resign yourself to
Speaker 1: the fact that you just won't make as much money
Speaker 1: selling a left handed guitar as you would selling a
Speaker 1: right handed guitar. Either way, you're not likely to make
Speaker 1: that many left handed guitars, and it's important that you
Speaker 1: know I am not criticizing that decision. It makes no
Speaker 1: economic sense to produce left handed anything's in the same
Speaker 1: amount as right handed ones. You would never sell them
Speaker 1: all because there's just not enough left handers to make
Speaker 1: up the market. The same is true for all the
Speaker 1: different options you find with products like guitars. Sure you
Speaker 1: could spend the time and effort necessary to provide the
Speaker 1: exact same options to lefties as you do to right ease,
Speaker 1: but there's a good chance you would end up with
Speaker 1: a lot of unsold stock. You might eventually move that
Speaker 1: unsold stock by selling products at a huge discount, but
Speaker 1: by then you could be looking at maybe breaking even
Speaker 1: or perhaps even selling them at a loss. It makes
Speaker 1: way more sense to just never make the ding dang
Speaker 1: durned things in the first place. So this means that
Speaker 1: left handers often have to make some compromises when it
Speaker 1: comes to technology. Either we have to make do with
Speaker 1: things that were made for right handers and find a
Speaker 1: way to make it work, or we are left with
Speaker 1: a limited number of options that pales in comparison to
Speaker 1: what is available for right handers. When we come back,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about how the more sinister among us have
Speaker 1: to navigate technology, But first let's take a quick break. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to go into the history of how
Speaker 1: being left handed is or was a taboo in many
Speaker 1: cultures that gets outside the realm of tech stuff, but
Speaker 1: it mostly comes down to how groups of people are
Speaker 1: pretty good at identifying individuals who do not fit the norm,
Speaker 1: and then they attempt to find ways to explain why
Speaker 1: that person is different, and those ways often can end
Speaker 1: up being negative. Going into left handed technology is interesting
Speaker 1: because in some cultures the typical approach to dealing with
Speaker 1: left handers was to force them to perform tasks as
Speaker 1: a right hander. Forcing people to write with their right
Speaker 1: hand even if they were left handed. You hear the
Speaker 1: story all the time, and this is not always easy
Speaker 1: for left handers. I mean, assuming you're not ambidexterous, I
Speaker 1: imagine there are things that you would find fairly simple
Speaker 1: to do with your dominant hand that become frustratingly difficult
Speaker 1: to do with your non dominant hand. I figured we'd
Speaker 1: start with a technology that I found quite vexing in
Speaker 1: my youth, a very simple technology, scissors. Let's talk about
Speaker 1: how scissors work. So scissors are a type of compound machine,
Speaker 1: and a compound machine is one that makes use of
Speaker 1: two or more simple machines. The six simple machines. The
Speaker 1: classic simple machines are the wheel and axle, the lever,
Speaker 1: the inclined plane, the pulley, the screw, and the wedge. Now, interestingly,
Speaker 1: the pully, screw, and wedge are all extensions of the
Speaker 1: first three machines, and simple machines are intended to change
Speaker 1: the magnitude of a force or the direction of that force.
Speaker 1: A pair of scissors consists of two blades, which are
Speaker 1: essentially wedges, and that's one of the simple machines. They
Speaker 1: are also mounted in a cross shape around a fulcrum,
Speaker 1: and that turns the handles of the scissors into levers,
Speaker 1: another simple machine. So pushing the levers together brings the
Speaker 1: wedge blades together, and that's what allows you to cut stuff. Moreover,
Speaker 1: the process of squeezing the handles actually creates pressure that
Speaker 1: squeezes the blades together, not just up and down, but
Speaker 1: left and right, so there's a sort of pinching action
Speaker 1: happening between the blades that allows for a nice clean cut.
Speaker 1: That is, they do this if you happen to be
Speaker 1: using the scissors in the proper hand. If a left
Speaker 1: hander tries to use right handed scissors with their left hand,
Speaker 1: they will find that the blades tend to create a
Speaker 1: space between them as they close, so they close up
Speaker 1: and down, but there's a space left and right that
Speaker 1: allows whatever you're cutting to bend between the blades, which
Speaker 1: usually means you don't tend to cut anything at all,
Speaker 1: or if you do cut, you do so in a
Speaker 1: way where you're mauling whatever it is you're trying to cut.
Speaker 1: I can't tell you how many times I ended up
Speaker 1: with what looked like shredded paper instead of a nice
Speaker 1: clean cut. The squeezing action with the left hand just
Speaker 1: creates a force along that fulcrum that moves the blades
Speaker 1: apart rather than squeezing them together. Now, left handers can
Speaker 1: attempt to compensate for this by creating a different force
Speaker 1: with their fingers, essentially pushing their thumbs and index fingers
Speaker 1: in a way to create that pinching force. You're forcing
Speaker 1: the blades together. The boy, howdy, that is not comfortable.
Speaker 1: It hurts. Moreover, the position of the blades means that
Speaker 1: the top blade is always on the right side. You
Speaker 1: can flip the blades over, but that means the top
Speaker 1: blade is still on the right side. This actually makes
Speaker 1: it really hard for left handers to see what they
Speaker 1: are cutting. If they're trying to cut with their left
Speaker 1: hand because the blade is in the way. Left handed
Speaker 1: scissor have the top blade on the left side rather
Speaker 1: than the right side. That there are so called left
Speaker 1: handed scissors that don't do this, but they are left
Speaker 1: handed only in the sense that they have handles that
Speaker 1: have contours that better fit the left hand. But without
Speaker 1: changing that blade orientation, you really haven't solved the problem.
Speaker 1: You still can't really see what you're cutting, and you're
Speaker 1: still going to be forcing those blades apart from each other. Now.
Speaker 1: Fun fact, I never learned to use left handed scissors
Speaker 1: because when I was going to school, my school just
Speaker 1: didn't have any. I would use right handed scissors, either
Speaker 1: trying desperately to get them to work with my left
Speaker 1: hand or just giving up and using my right hand,
Speaker 1: knowing that whatever I was going to cut was going
Speaker 1: to look awful because of my lack of fine motor
Speaker 1: skills with my non dominant hand. For another common tool,
Speaker 1: one much more advanced than a pair of scissors, let
Speaker 1: us consider the computer mouse. Now, your typical computer mouse
Speaker 1: tends to have at least two buttons, one on the
Speaker 1: left and one on the right. There are ones that don't.
Speaker 1: They're the single button mouse. Types like the ones that
Speaker 1: are used with certain max that kind of thing. But
Speaker 1: your typical computer mouse has at least two buttons, a
Speaker 1: left click and a right click, and they tend to
Speaker 1: be contoured in such a way the mouse is that
Speaker 1: they have a nice fit with the right hand. They
Speaker 1: don't fit the left hand the same way. They're just
Speaker 1: not contoured that way. And most programs tend to incorporate
Speaker 1: mouse commands by shifting important functions for the keyboard to
Speaker 1: the left side of that keyboard, so that way you've
Speaker 1: got the mouse in your right hand and your left
Speaker 1: hand remains free on the left side of the keyboard
Speaker 1: to do whatever other functions you need to do to
Speaker 1: navigate the program. Computer games tend to be a good
Speaker 1: example of how this plays out in favor of right ees.
Speaker 1: So take a first person shooter game like Doom. The
Speaker 1: mouse controls your point of view or your aim the game.
Speaker 1: You use your mouse to direct your line of sight
Speaker 1: and thus where you have your big zappy gun pointed
Speaker 1: at any given moment so you can shoot all those
Speaker 1: little demon critters. Your character's movement maps typically to the
Speaker 1: WAZA keys, the W A S D keys w being
Speaker 1: forward s being backward and A and D typically being
Speaker 1: straffe left and strafe right, respectively. In a shooting game,
Speaker 1: you need to have precise aim to compete at really
Speaker 1: high levels. If you watch some pro e sports players
Speaker 1: and you really pay attention to how fast and precise
Speaker 1: they are with their aim, it's incredible and it requires
Speaker 1: a highly developed fine motor skill set with whatever hand
Speaker 1: you're using to aim. In contrast, your movement in these
Speaker 1: style of games is important, but typically does not need
Speaker 1: the same level of precision as aiming, so offloading movement
Speaker 1: to the non dominant hand isn't a huge problem. Left
Speaker 1: handers have it harder. If they're using a traditional right
Speaker 1: handed set up. They're aiming with their non dominant hand,
Speaker 1: and thus they tend to be less precise and less accurate.
Speaker 1: Now I know that's the case with me, and of
Speaker 1: course I'm also older, so my reaction times are slowing
Speaker 1: down too. I guess what I'm saying is you really
Speaker 1: don't want me to be on your Overwatch team. There
Speaker 1: are left handed versions of the computer mouse out there,
Speaker 1: and the fact that we've gone to USB connections rather
Speaker 1: than the old PS slash two ports that computers and
Speaker 1: stuff like keyboards and mice used to depend on. We
Speaker 1: don't use those anymore, which that usually means you actually
Speaker 1: have more options of where you can connect stuff to
Speaker 1: your computer, so cable management isn't as big a pain
Speaker 1: in the neck because you typically have more options of
Speaker 1: where that USB cable can plug into. If the game
Speaker 1: developers thought it through, you might even be able to
Speaker 1: map your computer keys so that your movement stuff can
Speaker 1: go to a different set of four keys, such as I, J, K, L,
Speaker 1: or the number pad. If you can't map keys, then
Speaker 1: it means the left hander has to deal with sitting
Speaker 1: in an odd way or positioning their keyboard in an
Speaker 1: offset way so that the right hand can control those
Speaker 1: W A, S D keys. Now, I used video games
Speaker 1: as my example, but of course the computer mouse is
Speaker 1: a standard input device for all sorts of PC programs.
Speaker 1: I'm the only left handed person in my family, so
Speaker 1: our computers at home all had a right handed set up,
Speaker 1: right handed computer mouse and all that kind of stuff. Likewise,
Speaker 1: when I got to high school and they just started
Speaker 1: to offer classes using computers, all of those machines had
Speaker 1: a right handed mouse as well. Some of the programs
Speaker 1: would allow you to switch the mouse to a left
Speaker 1: handed mode. But really all that meant was that the
Speaker 1: left and right mouse buttons flipped what they did, so
Speaker 1: that a right mouse click was the equivalent to a
Speaker 1: right hander using a left mouse click. It didn't magically
Speaker 1: change the shape of the mouse or how it connected
Speaker 1: to the PC, so it might still not really be convenient.
Speaker 1: So as a result, I taught myself to use a
Speaker 1: mouse right handed early on. It wasn't that big a
Speaker 1: deal because most of the stuff I was doing didn't
Speaker 1: require lightning, fast reactions or anything, so I could take
Speaker 1: my time moving my wobbly little cursor to the right
Speaker 1: spot on the screen. A few times I tried to
Speaker 1: use a left handed mouse. I hated it because all
Speaker 1: the important keyboard functions were on the wrong side of
Speaker 1: the keyboard and the user interface was clearly biased toward
Speaker 1: right handers. It was just more convenient, though less precise,
Speaker 1: to use my right hand on the mouse. Sticking with
Speaker 1: video games, let's talk about consoles for a second. The
Speaker 1: standard console controller these days has two thumbsticks, one for
Speaker 1: each thumb. The left thumbstick typically control stuff like movement,
Speaker 1: a right control stuff like camera angle or aim. So
Speaker 1: again the task that requires the most precise fine tuning
Speaker 1: goes to the right side. Some games do allow you
Speaker 1: to change this. That's nice, but it's a bit weird
Speaker 1: when you first do it, particularly since a lot of
Speaker 1: games also include platforming elements where you need to access
Speaker 1: controls that are mapped to the buttons on the controller.
Speaker 1: The buttons on most controllers are, you guessed it over,
Speaker 1: on the right side, so you have to take your
Speaker 1: thumb off the right stick to hit the buttons on
Speaker 1: the right side of the controller. If aim is going
Speaker 1: to the left thumbstick and movement is going to the
Speaker 1: right thumb stick, suddenly you can't jump and move at
Speaker 1: the same time because you have to take your thumb
Speaker 1: off the thumbstick and it has to do all the work.
Speaker 1: You could conceivably buy a really expensive controller with stuff
Speaker 1: like extra paddles and trigger buttons and map things out
Speaker 1: to improve matters, but it's really hard to compensate for
Speaker 1: this design using just a standard controller, and not all
Speaker 1: games allow you to map controls like that. Now, I
Speaker 1: don't mean to suggest that being left handed immediately means
Speaker 1: a person is going to be bad at stuff like
Speaker 1: video games. There are left handed players out there who
Speaker 1: are amazing. Many have spent countless hours training their non
Speaker 1: dominant hand to do more finely tuned tasks, and they
Speaker 1: can compete at a professional level. But for a lot
Speaker 1: of us, these basic approaches to design stand as an
Speaker 1: extra challenge we face on top of whatever it is
Speaker 1: we actually want to do now. I mentioned UI or
Speaker 1: user interface a moment ago. The user interface of a
Speaker 1: technology is exactly what it sounds like. It's the method
Speaker 1: by which a user interacts with the technology. It includes
Speaker 1: not just the physical interaction, such as the keyboard amouse
Speaker 1: of a PC, or the touch screen of a smartphone
Speaker 1: or the controller for a video game console. It also
Speaker 1: includes the actual design of the software and how things
Speaker 1: are laid out, and sometimes developers will build it in
Speaker 1: a system that just favors right handedness in more subtle ways.
Speaker 1: For example, I can't tell you how many on screen
Speaker 1: smartphone keyboards I've used that become a total hassle because
Speaker 1: I would be using my left hand and I would
Speaker 1: hit keys a little to the left of center, and
Speaker 1: the keys were really designed to be hit a little
Speaker 1: to the right of center. I've practiced using my right
Speaker 1: index finger to try and type things out much more
Speaker 1: smoothly then if I were to use my left hand.
Speaker 1: But I am left handed. I want to use my
Speaker 1: left hand. I'm faster at it. It's more comfortable, at
Speaker 1: least it would be, but I have to end up
Speaker 1: thinking about aiming a little to the right of where
Speaker 1: I think I need to go in order to hit
Speaker 1: the key I want. Otherwise I'm just getting typos and
Speaker 1: nonsense all the time. This sort of bias in design
Speaker 1: can be found in a lot of other places too.
Speaker 1: For example, the typical student desk tends to have a
Speaker 1: shape that caters to right handers. Often there's a place
Speaker 1: for the right arm to rest while the student is writing,
Speaker 1: whereas on the left side of the desk it's typically open.
Speaker 1: So if you're a lefty, you're writing with no support
Speaker 1: for your left arm. And when I went to high school,
Speaker 1: they had just switched over to these asymmetric desks and
Speaker 1: they had more surface area on the right side. So
Speaker 1: that's great if you're a right hander, your your notebook
Speaker 1: is supported, you can just right that way. But as
Speaker 1: a lefty, it meant that I had to twist a
Speaker 1: bit in my seat just to write stuff down. Even
Speaker 1: notebooks are laid out in a way that work better
Speaker 1: for right handers than left handers, at least for those
Speaker 1: of us in the Western hemisphere who are writing left
Speaker 1: to right. The binding of a notebook is on the
Speaker 1: left side. Now, that's not in the way if you're
Speaker 1: a right hander. But if you're a lefty, then you've
Speaker 1: got that binding to deal with, which means you're either
Speaker 1: contorting yourself to work around it, or you're starting a
Speaker 1: good deal further into the page than your right handed
Speaker 1: counterparts are. Curse you notebook bindings. For that reason, when
Speaker 1: I use notebooks, I typically either flip them upside down,
Speaker 1: or I flipped them over and I start from the
Speaker 1: back and I worked my way forward that way. The
Speaker 1: binding is on the right side. I still right left
Speaker 1: to right, but now the spiral of rings is on
Speaker 1: the right hand side, and they don't get in my way. Now.
Speaker 1: So far, most of the stuff I've mentioned has been frustrating,
Speaker 1: but ultimately not really that big a deal. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: not fun to compensate to interact with a world that
Speaker 1: was designed for people who aren't like you. But for
Speaker 1: the most part, the examples I've used are fairly benign,
Speaker 1: but just you wait, we'll be right back after this
Speaker 1: short break. Left handers aren't strangers to facing struggles using
Speaker 1: technology meant for right handers. And when we're lucky, someone
Speaker 1: has created a left handed version for us to use.
Speaker 1: When we're really lucky, that left handed version works just
Speaker 1: as well as the right handed one does. When we're
Speaker 1: crazy lucky, whatever it is we're doing with that left
Speaker 1: handed tool doesn't otherwise have handedness entering into the picture.
Speaker 1: But now we're gonna talk about chain saws. Yeah, chainsaws.
Speaker 1: These are really useful and potentially extremely dangerous, and their
Speaker 1: design favors right handers, which means that for people like me,
Speaker 1: they become much more potentially dangerous tools. Now, chainsaw has
Speaker 1: two handles. One is at the very rear of the chainsaw.
Speaker 1: That's where the throttle control is, and that's meant for
Speaker 1: the dominant hand. Really, it's meant for the right hand.
Speaker 1: And then there's a front handle, and typically that's an
Speaker 1: arc that goes along the top and side the left
Speaker 1: side of the chainsaw. It's meant for the left hand
Speaker 1: to be there to help guide the chainsaw. Many chainsaws
Speaker 1: have that front handle join with the body of the chainsaw.
Speaker 1: Itself close to the top right side of the device,
Speaker 1: which means that even if you wanted to hold it
Speaker 1: as a left hander, you would be very limited and
Speaker 1: where your right hand could go, they couldn't go all
Speaker 1: the way to the edge because that's where the are
Speaker 1: the handle actually joins the body of the chainsaw. But
Speaker 1: if you're holding the chainsaw with your right hand on
Speaker 1: the rear handle, there's plenty of space for your left
Speaker 1: hand to hold onto the front handle. That gives you
Speaker 1: lots of different options for grips when you need to
Speaker 1: use the chainsaw on different orientations, But typically you just
Speaker 1: don't have that level of versatility on the right side
Speaker 1: of the front handle, so if you were to try
Speaker 1: and hold it left handed, you would already be facing
Speaker 1: some limitations and controls really important when you've got a
Speaker 1: whirling chain blade right in front of you. You want
Speaker 1: that dominant hand on the back to control the overall
Speaker 1: motion of the chainsaw and to deal with any kickback
Speaker 1: you might have. The non dominant hand is really meant
Speaker 1: to use to to guide the specific angle of attack
Speaker 1: of the chainsaw. Chainsaws typically have a guard that's called
Speaker 1: a chain break like a break like a kind you
Speaker 1: would have in a car, and that's mounted in front
Speaker 1: of the front handle. The chain break is essentially a
Speaker 1: lever that, if it gets pushed beyond a fail point,
Speaker 1: will cut off power to the blade. So let's say
Speaker 1: that you're using the chainsaw. The chainsaw bucks back so
Speaker 1: that the blade is now arching up so it would
Speaker 1: be coming towards your head. The lever is positioned in
Speaker 1: such a way that it will make contact with the
Speaker 1: back of your leading hand, your left hand, and it'll
Speaker 1: trip that lever, cutting off power to the blade. That's
Speaker 1: the idea. The problem here is that if you are
Speaker 1: using it the other way around, with your left hand
Speaker 1: on the rear handle, your right hand might not be
Speaker 1: in the right position to really engage with that chain break,
Speaker 1: so if something bad happens, there may be no way
Speaker 1: to stop it. That's not great. Or you could be
Speaker 1: operating it as a right hander, but it means your
Speaker 1: non dominant hand is the one that's trying to control
Speaker 1: the overall motion of the blade. That's not a great
Speaker 1: option either. Now I have used chainsaws a few times,
Speaker 1: I've always had to revert to using them as if
Speaker 1: I were right handed, which in my mind is the
Speaker 1: least bad of all the different options I had in
Speaker 1: front of me. And this is just one example of
Speaker 1: a power tool that is designed to be used by
Speaker 1: right handers. Pretty Much every tool is biased toward being
Speaker 1: right handed. Either the tools are contoured in a way
Speaker 1: where they fit the right hand but not the left,
Speaker 1: or they operate in such a way that you really
Speaker 1: need to be using them in your right hand, or
Speaker 1: the line of sight doesn't really work unless you're using
Speaker 1: it with the right hand dominant side. Whether it's a
Speaker 1: table saw or a drill press or a power drill,
Speaker 1: a lot of these tools just work best if they're
Speaker 1: operated by a right hander, and at worst they can
Speaker 1: be dangerous if they are operated any other way. The
Speaker 1: same thing is true with firearms. Now, I am not
Speaker 1: a gun guy. I have not fired any type of
Speaker 1: firearm in a really long time, but if I did,
Speaker 1: I'd likely be frustrated by the lack of options for me.
Speaker 1: Most handguns that have an external safety catch place that
Speaker 1: on the left side of the gun so that your
Speaker 1: right thumb can easily disengage the catch whenever you are
Speaker 1: ready to actually fire the handgun. But if you're holding
Speaker 1: this in your left hand, the catches on the opposite
Speaker 1: side of the gun from where your thumb rests. It's
Speaker 1: no longer where you can easily disengage it. Many rifles
Speaker 1: are designed specifically to use with the butt of the
Speaker 1: stock up against your right side. They expend spent casings
Speaker 1: out the right side of the firearm, so they're away
Speaker 1: from the shooter. If you were to try and fire
Speaker 1: left handed, you would be dealing with this, and it
Speaker 1: would make the experience less safe for you and as
Speaker 1: well as less safe for anyone who happens to be
Speaker 1: around you. It's not great. Now there are manufacturers that
Speaker 1: make ambidextrous models of firearms, meaning that at least in theory,
Speaker 1: they can be fired either by a right hander or
Speaker 1: a left hander with no real difference in performance. And
Speaker 1: then there are a few that will make left handed
Speaker 1: models of certain firearms, but these tend to be more
Speaker 1: expensive than the exact same models that were made for
Speaker 1: right handers, for much the same reason that it's hard
Speaker 1: to find good options for left handed guitars. That being,
Speaker 1: the manufacturing process has been streamlined to create a certain
Speaker 1: type of product in a very particular way, and that
Speaker 1: process works great when that's all you want to do.
Speaker 1: But if you want to do anything besides make the
Speaker 1: exact same product with the exact same orientation, that assembly
Speaker 1: line cannot really accommodate that. So yeah, we left handers
Speaker 1: need to make do, or maybe spend more money so
Speaker 1: that we don't have to make do now. There is
Speaker 1: a small, nearly cottage industry business of creating left handed
Speaker 1: versions of many common utensils, tools, and gadgets. For left handers,
Speaker 1: there are left handed can openers, for example, since using
Speaker 1: a right handed can opener is tricky and at best
Speaker 1: of pain in the well the hands, I guess. For
Speaker 1: left handers, there are rulers that have measurements that go
Speaker 1: from right to left, which is useful if you're a
Speaker 1: lefty and you want to draw a line as a
Speaker 1: precise length. Otherwise, my mo was to start at the
Speaker 1: end result and work back at zero. So if I
Speaker 1: needed to draw a three inch line, I would start
Speaker 1: on the three inch mark and then draw toward the zero,
Speaker 1: because then it was just easier for me to see
Speaker 1: what I was doing. There are left handed cork screws
Speaker 1: because it's easier to use because the twisting motion ends
Speaker 1: up being counterclockwise rather than clockwise. There are left handed
Speaker 1: measuring cups and left handed playing cards. These have markings
Speaker 1: on the opposite side of where you would find them
Speaker 1: on the right handed version or the standard version. The
Speaker 1: products are otherwise identical to right handed whatever's right right,
Speaker 1: A left handed measuring cup is exactly the same as
Speaker 1: a right hand measuring cup, except the markings are on
Speaker 1: the opposite side of the cup. That's it. For that
Speaker 1: wonderful little flip, You're gonna be paying a premium, I mean,
Speaker 1: like sometimes a crazy premium. You might see a measuring
Speaker 1: cup that would cost five bucks end up being a
Speaker 1: twenty dollar cup because it is a left handed one.
Speaker 1: So yes, there is a certain selection of common tools
Speaker 1: and utensils that you can find in a left handed orientation.
Speaker 1: They typically cost more than the right handed version for
Speaker 1: the reasons that I've given already, and sometimes they don't
Speaker 1: even work as well as the right handed versions because
Speaker 1: sometimes they're just made by right handers. But if you look,
Speaker 1: you can often find them. So being left handed in
Speaker 1: a world that has largely been designed by and for
Speaker 1: right handed people isn't always easy or even safe. There
Speaker 1: have even been numerous studies that suggest that left handers
Speaker 1: may have a lower life expectancy than right handers, not
Speaker 1: because we are somehow inherently less healthy, but perhaps because
Speaker 1: we might be a little more accident prone than right handers.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe we're using those right handed chainsaws in
Speaker 1: a way that is most assuredly going to result in catastrophe.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of little tasks that just become
Speaker 1: a touch harder for the poor lefties of us out there.
Speaker 1: All that being said, I chose this topic not just
Speaker 1: a grouse about how irritating it is to be left
Speaker 1: handed sometimes, though again that was a big part of it,
Speaker 1: but to show how this is just one way that
Speaker 1: bias can have an impact on a population. In this case,
Speaker 1: I'm talking about handedness. And it's pretty obvious that most
Speaker 1: of the time the bias against left handers isn't malicious.
Speaker 1: It's not intentional. It's not like right handers are trying
Speaker 1: to wipe out the left handers by creating stuff like
Speaker 1: can openers or pencil sharpeners or chainsaws that really only
Speaker 1: operate properly if they're used as a right handed way.
Speaker 1: They're just making stuff that works for them, and that's
Speaker 1: one of the really insidious things about bias. It doesn't
Speaker 1: have to be an intentional malicious thing. When engineers are
Speaker 1: building something, they want to make something that works, and
Speaker 1: you have to consider what the problem is and how
Speaker 1: you intend to solve that problem, and then you design
Speaker 1: that solution. And many times engineers are looking at problems
Speaker 1: from their own perspectives, but not from the perspective of
Speaker 1: someone who is not like them, And for that reason,
Speaker 1: we sometimes get technologies that work really great if you
Speaker 1: happen to match the same general demographic and perspective as
Speaker 1: the engineer who made it, but not so great if
Speaker 1: you don't. This becomes an enormous issue with stuff like accessibility,
Speaker 1: where people who might be differently abled are trying to
Speaker 1: use technology. Those who have challenges with hearing or vision
Speaker 1: or what have you might find it extra difficult to
Speaker 1: make use of certain technologies because those technologies depend rather
Speaker 1: heavily upon faculties that the differently abled may not possess,
Speaker 1: or at least may not possess to the same degree.
Speaker 1: And so a gadget that an able bodied person might
Speaker 1: think is life changing could be completely useless in the
Speaker 1: hands of someone else. And it doesn't always have to
Speaker 1: be that way. Designing things with accessibility in mind presents
Speaker 1: new challenges, no doubt about that. But that's what engineering
Speaker 1: is all about. It's about overcoming challenges. Moreover, it means
Speaker 1: more people can directly benefit from the solutions that engineers create,
Speaker 1: and bias can emerge in lots of other ways. I've
Speaker 1: recently had shows where I've mentioned bias in the design
Speaker 1: of systems that use artificial intelligence and machine learning. If
Speaker 1: you train a system using a data set that is biased,
Speaker 1: the end result will reflect that bias. For example, if
Speaker 1: you train an image recognition system to identify a face
Speaker 1: and you only train the system using a data set
Speaker 1: that includes photos of white people, that system could have
Speaker 1: problems working when you feed in pictures of people who
Speaker 1: aren't white. We've seen this happen with some pretty awful results.
Speaker 1: More than a few facial recognition systems have shown to
Speaker 1: work well when they're identifying white people, but not well
Speaker 1: whenever trying to identify people of color. That bias leads
Speaker 1: us to a technological kind of racism that has real
Speaker 1: world effects and consequences, much worse effects than the little
Speaker 1: frustrations I've encountered as a left handed person I can't
Speaker 1: even begin to understand how that all plays out in
Speaker 1: a day to day life, except to know that it's
Speaker 1: just worse than what I have to cope with. So
Speaker 1: that's really the message of this episode. It's not that
Speaker 1: we need more left handed strato caster guitars, though that
Speaker 1: is also true. We do need them more specifically, I
Speaker 1: need them even more specifically. I just need one, really,
Speaker 1: and it's gonna be a while before I can justify
Speaker 1: buying a silver burst left handed strato caster, So get
Speaker 1: on that fender. No, the real message of this episode
Speaker 1: is that the purpose of technology, when you really it
Speaker 1: down to it, is to make our lives better. But
Speaker 1: that's only true if we're designing technology that addresses the
Speaker 1: needs of people in general, not subsets of people or
Speaker 1: through excluding groups of people. Whether you are designing a
Speaker 1: physical gadget or an app or whatever, it is important
Speaker 1: to step outside of yourself and to think about how
Speaker 1: people who are different from you will be accessing and
Speaker 1: experiencing the use of that technology. It could be that
Speaker 1: with just a few tweaks, you could turn what was
Speaker 1: a decent idea into a world changing one. I plan
Speaker 1: on doing more episodes like this one, and I hope
Speaker 1: to get some women on this show to talk about
Speaker 1: how the tech world has tried to cater to women
Speaker 1: in various ways, sometimes successfully and perhaps way too frequently,
Speaker 1: sometimes in colossal failures. Just look at all the pink stuff.
Speaker 1: But I think that that is really a related issue,
Speaker 1: particularly in an industry that is still dominated by male
Speaker 1: designers and engineers and executives. It's a problem that we
Speaker 1: have to confront and fix in order to make stuff
Speaker 1: that really works for everybody, or at least works for
Speaker 1: the intended audience, because otherwise you just get a bunch
Speaker 1: of you know, knuckle headed guys saying, you know, I
Speaker 1: think women like pink things, Let's make it pink. That's
Speaker 1: so not cool. Anyway. This is an issue that obviously
Speaker 1: goes beyond technology, but we see it really with laser
Speaker 1: focus in the tech world over and over again. That's
Speaker 1: why I wanted to bring it up. And I brought
Speaker 1: up the left handed perspective because it's one I can
Speaker 1: speak to directly. It's one that I have experienced, and
Speaker 1: I can acknowledge that while it can be frustrating, it's
Speaker 1: nothing like what other people go through through all the time.
Speaker 1: In their day to day lives. So that's it for
Speaker 1: this episode. More of a kind of abstract approach to technology,
Speaker 1: but one I think is important and our goal, I
Speaker 1: think should always be to create technologies that work for
Speaker 1: as many people as possible, to improve things as much
Speaker 1: as possible, and not just to you know, throw in
Speaker 1: a feature because you think it's cool, or to throw
Speaker 1: in a feature and call it accessibility in order to
Speaker 1: have a little box checked off of your to do list.
Speaker 1: That's not good enough. If you guys have suggestions for
Speaker 1: future topics of tech stuff, whether it's a specific technology,
Speaker 1: maybe it's a company, maybe it's a person in tech,
Speaker 1: maybe it's a theme, let me know. Reach out on Twitter.
Speaker 1: The handle is tech stuff H. S W and I'll
Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows. H