“Provide a laptop to all the managers and surrender the stenographers” is the modern-day slogan. Everyone feels the stenographer is a liability and that stenography itself has lost the race to computers and other gadgets. No one is clear what is going to become extinct — the stenographer or stenography? The fact is stenography, now on a ventilator support, needs life-saving drugs in the form of lateral thinking to survive.
Fifteen years ago, no one would have imagined that one multi-utility mobile phone would destroy the alarm clock, calculator and photo camera manufacturing industries in one go. The technique remains, the gadget has changed.
If only there was a legislation making the learning of typewriting compulsory for those pursuing a degree in IT or computer science, many technical institutes would not have closed down, converted into DTP centres or rented out their buildings for survival. This generation, especially students, needs to be educated about the benefits of typing and shorthand. It is a common sight to see a lot of people typing with one or two fingers on the computer, which may hasten the advent of Carpal tunnel syndrome or cervical spondylosis, caused due to sitting in improper posture for long duration. Henry Mill’s invention, the typewriter, employs a scientific methodology assigning specific fingers for specific alphabets. In an era of social networking sites and hi-fi mobiles, typing could be made faster with the knowledge of the basics of typewriting, thereby making the chat or mail livelier with quick responses.
Shorthand, a wonderful art, was the language of erstwhile reporters. I pity many modern day reporters who spend a lot of energy in jotting down shortened forms of words akin to text messaging. Or, they record speeches in mobiles and then elaborate. Their work would have simplified with a basic training in stenography.
Stenographers, past and present, should dispel the wrong impression that stenography culminates in the person becoming a stenographer alone. The youth now have already stopped hiring professional photographers or videographers for family functions. They double up as photographers, musicians or dancers.
Stenography’s survival need not hinge on the survival of professional stenographers. I remember taking shorthand notes of science lectures in college and during coaching classes for competitive exams. While I could cover almost every word taught in class as I wrote verbatim in shorthand, my classmates struggled to record even a minimum of what was taught.
Dickens took up stenography. He had excellent memory. Yet, he would jot down his dreams in shorthand and used them in his works.
Stenography is like salt. Salt cannot be food, but food can be made tasty with salt. It’s in the mind — whether to use it as a taste enhancer or to bury it as waste food.