You have a point, but keep in mind the thumb can oppose the fingers or the palm, and in doing so, the thumb is a much stronger digit, so the range of tasks it can accomplish by this opposition is larger.charlou wrote: I'd have thought a thumb is pretty useless without opposable fingers? If I had to choose any one finger to keep, I think it would be my right index.
Actually not, I know by feel that the same thing is going on, just in a slightly different way -- instead of thinking of a word and the fingers firing off in sequence, I think of a word and the trajectory of my hand and thumb follow an arc that is essentially the same... er, but different. It's hard to explain coherently, but I know the same thing is happening -- I'm generating actions based on a neural map that correlates the idea of a word with the actions that will accomplish that word. The only major difference is that because there is so much motion involved, I have to watch my typing so my "dance" doesn't wander from home (much like typists who accidentally shift their hands one position over and start typing gibberish). Of course that has drawbacks, especially for interactive conversations like irc, which results in my finishing hammering out my thought, only to look up and realize that the conversation has moved on, or worse, that some window has stolen focus and I've been impotently typing away to no effect.Charlou wrote: Touch typing (I do this) requires the use of all fingers dancing upon the keyboard in coordination in such a practiced way as to not even need any focus on the mechanics of the task ... Reducing that down to a single thumb ... well, I'd think that the previously practiced coordination of touch typing with eight fingers and thumb (in my case, being right handed, the right thumb) is rendered useless, and I can imagine that single digit touch typing must take some brain retraining?
Another aspect is the shift, control, alt and Capslock keys. There is accessibility software built into windows that holds the key down for the next keypress, so for capital R, I press SHIFT followed by r; if I press shift twice, the shift key is held until I press it again. Unfortunately, these helpers can wreak havoc if I or they lose state, and start doing unintended things. Forgetting that I have Capslock on and typing a whole message, shouted, in irc; and lately, because my hand really is flying, sometimes when I hit a key I may hit two, or hit one so hard it fires the other -- this is mostly a problem with the 'a', which is right next to the Capslock key, so I end up accidentally turning Capslock on, and typing reams of text before looking up to see that it's all in caps.
Mmmmmm.... sweet. Richard & Linda Thompson's "Walking On A Wire" Is there any greater solace than music? I think perhaps God created the world solely for a place to make music. A youtube poster suggested that Trish Keenan's untimely death earlier this year was on account of God needing another angelic voice in heaven. Indeed. An angelic voice, and a tragic loss for us.
And it's unconscious...
Unconscious, subconscious...meh. Splitting hairs. 
