Linked: The Demise of the Pen

via NYTimes:

Unlike pens, fingers don’t run out of ink, they’re free and you always have one with you. I use mine to take notes on my phone, highlight books on my Kindle and draw pictures on my iPad. I don’t have to worry about losing this work because, unlike a piece of paper, my digital notes live in perpetuity online.

This is the dumbest thing I’ve read all week. I feel dumber for having read it.

With the exception of signing credit card receipts, I haven’t used a pen/pencil since I was 12 years old. Why? What device do you think killed the writing utensil for me in the year 1998? The personal computer did. It was in 1998 that I got my first laptop 2nd hand from eBay and took it to school. It was a PC but my school had WiFi. It was’t secured because no other kid in school had a wireless device that could connect to it. The teachers used it…and they printed to laser printers located in every other classroom. So that’s what I did.

Freshman year of high-school, I saved up and bought my first new Mac (iBook Clamshell). It was the first of many Macintosh computers and the thousands of words I I wrote in high school were done on a laptop. In Sophomore year, I got one of those thin USB scanners so i could scan in work and then mark it up in Adobe Reader Professional.

The iPad didn’t kill the pen. the finger didn’t kill the pen (Nick is talking about touch screens) it was the keyboard that killed the pen.

By the way Nick, I’d love to see your artwork drawn with your finger on the iPad.