Omair Barkatulla's short film Typography School, from the London College of Printing, argues that traditional letterpress techniques can provide a better foundation for understanding type than computers. Printer/teacher David Dabner says, "Computers make students sloppy. It makes for sloppy thinking. It make for sloppy thinking ... a sloppy approach. Good typographers can think. If you can't think, you produce a lot of nonsense."

Arguable, but Dabner has a good point: Ease of use does not always (or even often) translate into better learning. Sometimes it's crucial to step back and slow down, to do something manual that tends towards enforced reflection rather than easy (and oversimplified) gratification. You can see a similar feeling expressed in the number of relatively geeky people who use Moleskine notebooks and fountain pens (me included): communication media are never neutral ecologies. They structure our interactions in differing, sometimes extremely powerful ways.

[via IxDA Discussion List]