The machine that made the Moon missions possible

Yahoo – AFP, Issam AHMED, July 12, 2019

The astronauts would input two-digit codes for verbs and nouns, to carry out
commands like firing thrusters, or locking on to a particular star to re-align
the ship (AFP Photo/Handout)

Washington (AFP) - We've all been there: you're working on something important, your PC crashes, and you lose all your progress.

Such a failure was not an option during the Apollo missions, the first time ever that a computer was entrusted with handling flight control and life support systems -- and therefore the lives of the astronauts on board.

Despite an infamous false alarm during lunar descent that sent Commander Neil Armstrong's heart rate racing, it was a resounding success that laid the groundwork for everything from modern avionics to multitasking operating systems.

Here are some of the ways the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC), millions of times less powerful than a 2019 smartphone, shaped the world we live in today:

Microchip revolution

Integrated circuits, or microchips, were a necessary part of the miniaturization process that allowed computers to be placed on board spacecraft, in contrast to the giant, power-hungry vacuum tube technology that came before.

The credit for their invention goes to Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments, and Robert Noyce, who co-founded Fairchild Semiconductor and later Intel in Mountain View, California.

Integrated circuits, or microchips, were a necessary part of the miniaturization process

 that allowed computers to be placed on board spacecraft, in contrast to the giant, 

power-hungry vacuum tube technology that came before (AFP Photo/HO)

But NASA and the Department of Defense -- which needed microchips to guide their Minuteman ballistic missiles pointed at the Soviet Union -- greatly accelerated their development by producing the demand that facilitated mass production.

"They had these incredible, absolutely insane requirements for reliability that nobody could possibly imagine," Frank O'Brien, a spaceflight historian and author of "The Apollo Guidance Computer: Architecture and Operation," told AFP.

In the early 1960s, the two agencies bought almost all the microchips made in the US, roughly a million all told, added O'Brien, forcing the makers to improve their designs and build circuits that lasted longer than their early life cycles of just a few hours.

Multitasking

Modern computers, such as the smartphone in your pocket, are generally capable of doing a myriad of tasks all at once: handling emails in one window, a GPS map in another, various social network apps, all the while ready for incoming calls and texts.

But in the early era of computers, we thought of them in a fundamentally different way.

"There wasn't a lot they were asked to do. They were asked to crunch numbers and replace humans who would do them on mechanical adding machines," said Seamus Tuohy, the principal director of space systems at Draper, which spun off from the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory that developed the Apollo Guidance Computer.

That all changed with Apollo Guidance Computer, a briefcase-sized machine that needed to juggle an array of vital tasks, from navigating the ship to running its oxygen generator, heaters and carbon dioxide scrubbers.

Margaret Hamilton led the team that programmed Apollo's flight computer; their code

allowed the machine to prioritize crucial tasks over non-essential ones (AFP Photo/HO)

Instead of a computer operator giving a machine a set of calculations and leaving it for hours or even days to work out the answer -- all of this needed to be done in a time-sensitive fashion, with cut-offs, and the ability for users (astronauts) to give it commands in real time.

NASA felt it required an onboard computer to handle all these functions in case the Soviets tried to jam radio communications between ground control in Houston and US spaceships, and because Apollo was originally conceived to go deeper into the solar system.

All of this required a software "architecture," much of which was designed by engineer Hal Laning.

Real-time input

It also needed new ways for man to interact with machine that went beyond the punch-card programming of the time.

The engineers came up with three key ways: the switches that you still find in modern cockpits, a hand-controller that was connected to the world's first digital fly-by-wire system, and a "display and keyboard" unit, abbreviated DSKY (pronounced "dis-key").

The astronauts would input two-digit codes for verbs and nouns, to carry out commands like firing thrusters, or locking on to a particular star if the ship, which relied on an inertial guidance system to keep its pitch, roll and yaw stable, had begun to drift off course.

"The way that computer handled the overload was a real breakthrough" said Paul Ceruzzi,
a Smithsonian Institution scholar on aerospace electronics (AFP Photo/Issam AHMED)

O'Brien used the metaphor of a tourist who visits the US and is hungry but doesn't know much English, and might say "Eat pizza" to convey the basic meaning.

Passing the test

Apollo 11's most tense moment came during the final minutes of its descent to the lunar surface, when the computer's alarm bells began ringing and making it seem as though it had crashed.

Such an event could well have been catastrophic, forcing the crew to abort their mission or even sending the vessel spiralling out of control to the surface.

Back in Houston, an engineer realized that while the machine was temporarily overloaded, its clever programming allowed it to automatically shed less important tasks and focus on landing.

"The way that computer handled the overload was a real breakthrough" said Paul Ceruzzi, a Smithsonian Institution scholar on aerospace electronics.

O'Brien noted that while the AGC was puny by modern computing standards, with a clock speed of 1 Mhz and a total of 38Kb of memory, such comparisons belied its true caliber.

"With that terribly small capacity, they were able to do all the amazing things that we now think of as completely normal," he said.

Rare Apple-I fetches less than expected at German auction

The computer was one of just 200 Apple-1 computers marketed by its founders - Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. The winner of Saturday's auction was a German engineer who collects old computers.

Deutsche Welle, 20 May 2017

 One of the earliest Apple-1 computers, still in working condition after 40 years, sold for $125,000 (110,000 euros) at an auction in Cologne Saturday.

Despite the extraordinary price, it sold for much less than the expected 180,000-300,000 euros - suggesting that the spike in prices following the death of Apple's co-founder in 2011 is over.

"From our point of view we are back at normal levels. Five years after the death of [Apple co-founder] Steve Jobs the 'hype' has settled back," said Uwe Breker, who oversaw the auction in Cologne.

Breker's auction house specializes in selling technical antiques. It was also involved in a 2013 sale of another Apple-I, which fetched 516,000 euros.

A German engineer

The model auctioned off Saturday, whose original owner was a Californian engineer, still had its receipt, its operating manual and other documents.

"[The Apple 1] was one of the first opportunities for someone to possess a real computer. I'd been working with computers for a while but they were huge," original owner John J. Dryden, who bought the Apple in 1976, said Friday.

Dryden admitted that parting with the machine was wrenching, but said the time had come as he had not used it in a long time.

The computer was one of around 200 Apple-1 units marketed by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, who developed and built it.

bik/jlw (dpa, AFP)

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"Wild Cards" (3) - Nov 19 - 20, 2016 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Carroll)- (Text version)

"...Then there was Steve Jobs. He was a wild card. What he did had little to do with technology, for that would have happened anyway soon enough. Instead, it had to do with the paradigm of the business of music on Earth. He freed it, and the paradigm of how music is obtained and heard will never be the same. However, Steve Jobs did basically one thing for all of you, and then he died. Do you see any kind of connecting of the dots to some of the inventors who come and give you the one thing, then leave? If he had lived, would there be more? Yes, but you’re not ready for it. Consciousness has to support what happens.  ...."

WikiLeaks dumps data from Sony hacking scandal

Yahoo – AFP, April 17, 2015

WikiLeaks published thousands of documents from last year's Sony hacking
scandal, calling them an insight into the inner workings of a "secretive" firm

New York (AFP) - WikiLeaks published thousands of documents on Thursday from last year's Sony hacking scandal, calling them an insight into the inner workings of a "secretive" firm.

The website said the searchable data dump includes 30,287 documents from the US-based Sony Pictures Entertainment and 173,132 emails to and from more than 2,200 company email addresses.

The same data was released online after hackers attacked Sony Pictures last November and threatened the company over the release of the comedy film "The Interview," which depicts a fictional CIA plot to kill North Korea's leader.

The threats saw Sony cancel the public debut of the movie and led to the resignation of chairperson Amy Pascal. The leaks showed that Pascal had swapped racially insensitive jokes about President Barack Obama over email.

Washington blamed North Korea for the hack.

"Now published in a fully searchable format The Sony Archives offer a rare insight into the inner workings of a large, secretive multinational corporation," WikiLeaks said in a statement.

It said the original release was not searchable and was removed before the public and journalists could scrutinize them.

Sony data was released online after hackers threatened the company over the release
of "The Interview," which depicts a fictional CIA plot to kill North Korea's leader

WikiLeaks described Sony as an influential corporation with ties to the White House, able to impact laws and policies, and with connections to the US military-industrial complex.

"It is newsworthy and at the center of a geo-political conflict," said WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who lives at Ecuador's embassy in London to avoid prosecution for alleged rape in Sweden.

"It belongs in the public domain. WikiLeaks will ensure it stays there," the Australian former hacker said.

Sony condemned the re-release of the data, saying the private information does not belong in the public domain and WikiLeaks is helping the hackers' efforts to harm employees.

"The cyber-attack on Sony Pictures was a malicious criminal act, and we strongly condemn the indexing of stolen employee and other private and privileged information on WikiLeaks," Sony said in a statement.

The data indicates company CEO, Michael Lynton, dined with Obama and Sony employees raised money for the Democratic Party and incumbent Democrat New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, WikiLeaks said.

Sony Pictures Entertainment is a multi-billion-dollar US subsidiary of the Tokyo-based Sony Corporation. It handles film and TV production, acquisition and distribution.

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Etiquette gets reboot for digital age

Yahoo – AFP, Rob Lever, 5 July 2014

File photo shows a couple reading texts on their smartphones while having

drinks together at a shopping mall in Bangkok (AFP Photo/Nicolas Asfouri)

Washington (AFP) - The digital age has created a host of new etiquette dilemmas.

What should you do when your boss sends a Facebook friend request? Is it OK to take and share smartphone pictures at a friend's wedding? When should you take off Google Glass, rather than just turn it off?

Etiquette mavens say the book on manners must be rewritten, literally, to take into account new technologies and social media.

"Technology is such an area of anxiety for people," says Steven Petrow, an author of etiquette books who last month began a digital manners column for USA Today.

In recent columns, Petrow addressed the question of mass emails that reveal the names of all recipients (not OK, he says), and how to deal with wedding guests who want to share smartphone pictures before the official photos are available (he urges the couple to make their wishes clear in the invitation).

"Fundamentally, I come back to my core values, which are about respect, kindness and civility," Petrow told AFP.

Social media such as Facebook pose particular etiquette problems: if users post news about a death, birth or engagement before relatives are notified, that creates tensions among family members.

"On Facebook, even if you have privacy protection, someone else can grab your message and send it along," said Emily Yoffe, who pens the "Dear Prudence" column on Slate.

"Once you post it, you don't control that information anymore," said Yoffe, advising people to treat all social media posts as public.

Petrow sees other quandaries -- for example, whether it is appropriate to "like" a Facebook post about sad news.

"I believe that liking means you acknowledge it," he said. "So you can like something sad but you should add a note to say what you mean."

Social media is also used to break off, or to announce a new relationship, which can be a surprise to the other person.

"It's always best to take your time, to discuss this with the other person," Petrow said.

As for the boss's friend request, Petrow advised managers to steer clear of this to avoid potential conflicts.

Etiquette mavens say the book on manners must be rewritten, literally, to 

take into account new technologies and social media (AFP Photo/Ed Jones)

Employees should not ignore the request, but offer instead to connect on the professional network LinkedIn, he said.

Emily Post for digital era

Digital technology has forced a reboot at the Emily Post Institute, which grew out of the work of the noted etiquette author.

Her great-great-grandson Daniel Post Senning released a book last year on digital etiquette after realizing the topic merited more than just a chapter in the updated Emily Post book.

"New technology is changing every major aspect of people's lives for which they would come to Emily Post looking for advice," Senning said.

A longstanding digital etiquette issue is when people should turn off or silence their smartphones.

"The biggest challenge is that these devices take our attention from the people we're with," Senning told AFP.

While smartphones are enormously useful tools, "If you're with other people, your attention should be there," Senning said. "Most people know that intuitively."

Social networks are great places for sharing, but sometimes people go overboard. A 2012 survey by Intel found that in several countries, a majority said they were put off by "oversharing" of pictures and personal information.

Senning said the Post Institute often follows what is accepted by the public but that sometimes it takes the opposite view "if it's a question of our fundamental principles of consideration, respect and honesty."

Think before you tweet

On Twitter, the ability to post messages quickly has led to some embarrassing moments or worse, experts say.

"Some people lose their jobs because of an ill-advised tweet," Yoffe said.

"In the heat of the moment, people think they are having a one-on-one conversation, but this is totally public."

Twitter gaffes can turn into public relations nightmares for companies using social media to boost their image.

A 2012 survey by Intel found that in several countries, a majority said they

 were put off by "oversharing" of pictures and personal information on the internet

and smartphones (AFP Photo/Nicolas Asfouri)

Dutch airline KLM, of the Air France-KLM Group, found this out when it tweeted "Adios Amigos" after the Netherlands' dramatic win over Mexico in football's World Cup.

The airline apologized and deleted the tweet, but not before thousands of enraged Mexicans tweeted their displeasure.

"We encourage companies to be conversational and engaging. But they have to understand they are speaking on behalf of a brand," said Jeanette Gibson of Hootsuite, which provides a social media dashboard, and offers training on using different platforms.

Gibson said social media marketing can be useful in building brand identity, "but you don't want to come across as spamming your audience."

Trouble with 'Glassholes'

Etiquette may see more changes with devices such as the Internet-connected eyewear Google Glass.

Google has preemptively offered tips to avoid becoming a "Glasshole," such as turning off the eyewear in many situations.

Wearable electronics like Google Glass create fears about being spied on.

"I don't think turning it off will be sufficient to quell those concerns," Petrow said.

"Every new device seems to spawn its own chapter of etiquette dilemmas."

From a historical perspective, "every generation perceives the state of manners in decline," said Senning of the Post Institute.

"People thought that when the telephone moved to the home it would destroy home life, and it didn't."

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The Internet  - The first Worldwide Tool of Unification ("The End of History")

" ... Now I give you something that few think about: What do you think the Internet is all about, historically? Citizens of all the countries on Earth can talk to one another without electronic borders. The young people of those nations can all see each other, talk to each other, and express opinions. No matter what the country does to suppress it, they're doing it anyway. They are putting together a network of consciousness, of oneness, a multicultural consciousness. It's here to stay. It's part of the new energy. The young people know it and are leading the way.... "

" ... I gave you a prophecy more than 10 years ago. I told you there would come a day when everyone could talk to everyone and, therefore, there could be no conspiracy. For conspiracy depends on separation and secrecy - something hiding in the dark that only a few know about. Seen the news lately? What is happening? Could it be that there is a new paradigm happening that seems to go against history?... " Read More …. "The End of History"- Nov 20,2010 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll)

"Recalibration of Free Choice"–  Mar 3, 2012 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Carroll) - (Subjects: (Old) Souls, Midpoint on 21-12-2012, Shift of Human Consciousness, Black & White vs. Color, 1 - Spirituality (Religions) shifting, Loose a Pope “soon”, 2 - Humans will change react to drama, 3 - Civilizations/Population on Earth,  4 - Alternate energy sources (Geothermal, Tidal (Paddle wheels), Wind), 5 – Financials Institutes/concepts will change (Integrity – Ethical) , 6 - News/Media/TV to change, 7 – Big Pharmaceutical company will collapse “soon”, (Keep people sick), (Integrity – Ethical)  8 – Wars will be over on Earth, Global Unity, … etc.) - (Text version)

“…5 - Integrity That May Surprise…

Have you seen innovation and invention in the past decade that required thinking out of the box of an old reality? Indeed, you have. I can't tell you what's coming, because you haven't thought of it yet! But the potentials of it are looming large. Let me give you an example, Let us say that 20 years ago, you predicted that there would be something called the Internet on a device you don't really have yet using technology that you can't imagine. You will have full libraries, buildings filled with books, in your hand - a worldwide encyclopedia of everything knowable, with the ability to look it up instantly! Not only that, but that look-up service isn't going to cost a penny! You can call friends and see them on a video screen, and it won't cost a penny! No matter how long you use this service and to what depth you use it, the service itself will be free.

Now, anyone listening to you back then would perhaps have said, "Even if we can believe the technological part, which we think is impossible, everything costs something. There has to be a charge for it! Otherwise, how would they stay in business?" The answer is this: With new invention comes new paradigms of business. You don't know what you don't know, so don't decide in advance what you think is coming based on an old energy world. ..."

'iNakba' app finds former Palestinian towns in Israel

Yahoo – AFP, May 6, 2014

'iNakba' app finds former Palestinian
towns in Israel (AFP)

Jerusalem (AFP) - An Israeli NGO is on Monday launching a smartphone app that allows users to find the remains of Palestinian villages that now lie inside modern-day Israel.

The launch is timed to coincide with Israel's 66th independence day, which begins at sundown, when the Palestinians remember the "Nakba" or "catastrophe" that befell them when Israel came into existence in 1948, and 760,000 of them fled or were forced into exile.

"iNakba" features an interactive map and photos of buildings and houses that Palestinians fled during the fighting which erupted after Israel declared itself independent.

"Many Palestinians have difficulty locating their home towns and villages (in Israel and the West Bank), because cities or Jewish settlements have been built on top of them," said Raneen Jeries of Zochrot, the NGO that developed the app.

"There's a file on each of hundreds of Palestinian villages or cities, and you can find information and see old and new user-uploaded photos about the locality," she told AFP.

Zochrot, based in Tel Aviv, campaigns for Israelis to recognise the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes, along with their descendants.

The right of return for Palestinian refugees has long been a key sticking point in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, the latest round of which collapsed in late April after nine months of apparently fruitless negotiations.

Israel fears that any flexibility on the issue would open the floodgates to millions of refugees, which would pose a demographic threat to the "Jewish and democratic character" of the state.

Palestinians mark Nakba Day every year on May 15.

"Our aim is to make Israeli Jews aware of the Nakba, which uprooted hundreds of thousands of Palestinians," said Liat Rosenberg, director of Zochrot.

Palestinians in the diaspora can "follow" their own villages to watch for new information or pictures posted by those who are able to visit them inside Israel, Jeries said.

"Refugees living in Lebanon, for example, can follow their village and each time someone uploads a photo of it or writes a comment, they'll see an update."

Zochrot uses maps from British Mandate Palestine (1920-1948) to locate the villages, Jeries said, and marks them on the interactive Google Maps-based app with virtual "pins".

Rosenberg admitted iNakba might not have the desired impact on most Israeli Jews, but insisted that "left-leaning Israelis will be interested in the app".

Steve Jobs’ Lisa Mouse discovered in lost time capsule buried in 1983

Slash Gear, Shane McGlaun, Sep 23rd 2013       

Way back in 1983, a time tube was buried in conjunction with the 1983 International Design Conference in Aspen, Colorado. When the tube was buried it was supposed to have been dug up in 2000 and the contents revealed to the public. However, changes in the landscape meant that the tube was lost.

 One of the most interesting items stuffed into that time tube came from Steve Jobs. Jobs put a mouse from Apple’s first mass-market computer called the Lisa inside the tube along with hordes of other material from other people who attended the conference. A television show that will air on the National Geographic Channel called Diggers discovered the tube recently.

For now, the producers of the television show are withholding most of the details of what was discovered inside the time tube. They have teased about Jobs’ mouse being discovered, but have offered no photographs of the device. Presumably, they’re withholding the details on the most interesting objects until the episode airs sometime in early 2014.

We can tell from the photographs offered is that someone stuffed a six-pack of beer inside and there are a huge number of plastic bags with personal items placed inside as well. We can also see in the photograph a number of what appear to be name badges from conference attendees and a bunch of little cards that say “The Future Is Not What It Used to Be” which was the conference title in 1983.

Steve Jobs addressed the attendees at this particular conference in 1983 with a talk some believe predicted some of Apple’s current successes such as the iPad along with wireless networking and the Apple App store. A few other items that the people who found the 13-foot-long capsule have noted were inside include an eight-track tape of The Moody Blues, a Sears Roebuck catalog, and a Rubik’s Cube.

SOURCE: National Geographic

India bids goodbye to the telegram

Deutsche Welle, 17 July 2013

Millions of people relied on it for decades. But now India's state-run telegram service has come to an end. Authorities felt telegrams were no longer commercially viable in a fast-growing age of digital communications.

It served as the harbinger of good and bad news for generations of Indians. The telegram conveyed the birth of a child, a death, and greetings on birthdays and festivals. But the curtains finally came down on the iconic 163-year-old Indian telegram service, on July 15th.

The service closed because of mounting financial losses and becoming redundant in an era of mobile phones and the Internet. "The losses were getting bigger. It was not practical to have kept it going much longer. We lost $250 million US dollars in the last seven years and it was time to put an end to the service," said Shameem Akhtar, general manager at the Bharat Sanchar Nigam, which runs India's telegram service.

One last telegram

To commemorate the last day, thousands crammed into telegraph offices across the country to send souvenir messages to family and friends before the service passed into the annals of history. The last recorded telegram was sent to Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi.

The state-run telegram service was
closed due to increasing financial
losses

"It is indeed a sad day for me. I have sent thousands of telegrams in my 35 years working in this small, dingy office. I even started typing up messages on computers to be sent via telegraph, instead of using Morse code," Madan Gopal, a telegraph operator in Delhi told DW.

Known popularly as "Taar" or wire, the telegram service, which provided millions with a fast and reliable mode of communication, began in 1850, when the first trial telegraph line was established between Kolkata and Diamond Harbour, a southern suburb nearly 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the city center. The British East India Company then started using the telegraph a year later, and by 1854, lines had been laid across the country.

By 1856, the network stretched 4000 miles across the British Raj, connecting the strategically vital cities of Kolkata, Agra, Bombay, Peshawar, and Madras.  "It certainly played an important role in the independence struggle and research shows that back in those days freedom fighters in the forefront of the movement used to cut the telegram lines to stop the British from communicating," sociologist Dipankar Gupta told DW.

From telegrams to smartphones

At its peak in 1985, the service sent 600,000 telegrams a day across India and had a network of 45,000 telegraph offices. Countless remote towns and villages across the country depended on the telegram for getting news where telephones were rare. Most telegraph workers criss-crossed inhospitable terrain to deliver the messages.

Experts say the telegram played an
 important in the Indian struggle for
independence

But with the arrival of the e-mail and reliable landline phones, the days of the telegram were counted. According to estimates, there are now over 850 million mobile phone subscribers and over 160 million Internet users in India. A recent study by Cisco has claimed that India has the fastest Internet traffic growth in the world, and that the number is expected to grow to 348 million users by 2017.

India is only the latest country to bid goodbye to the telegram. In the US, the main service provided by Western Union was shut down in 2006. Over the past decade, several countries have also phased out telegram services. The closing of the world's last major commercial telegram service marks an end of an era.

Computer mouse inventor dies at 88

Google – AFP, 4 July 2013

A vintage mouse is displayed at the Computer History Museum on

 January 19, 2011 in Mountain View, California. (Getty Images/AFP/File,

Justin Sullivan)

LOS ANGELES — Douglas Engelbart, who revolutionized computing by inventing the mouse, died in California on Tuesday at the age of 88, the institute bearing his name said Wednesday.

Born in Oregon, Engelbart studied electrical engineering and computer sciences in the 1950s before joining the Stanford Research Institute.

There, he and his team worked on a number of concepts that have entered the computer mainstream, such as email, video conferencing, hypertext links and ARPAnet, the precursor of the Internet.

But he is best remembered for the mouse, which in its original incarnation was a wood box with two metal wheels and was granted a patent in 1970.

He had publicly used it two years earlier during a video conference in San Francisco before some 1,000 people -- an event that became known as "the mother of all demos."

Engelbart had a total of 21 patents to his name. In 2000 he was presented with the National Medal of Technology, the tech industry's highest honor.

In Asia, ancient writing collides with the digital age

Yahoo – AFP, Miwa Suzuki (AFP), 25 June 2013

University student Akihiro Matsumura uses his tablet computer in Tokyo

on June 19, 2013. (Photo By Yoshikazu Tsuno)

As a schoolboy, Akihiro Matsumura spent hundreds of hours learning the intricate Chinese characters that make up a part of written Japanese. Now, the graduate student can rely on his smartphone, tablet and laptop to remember them for him.

"Sometimes I don't even bother to take notes in seminars. I just take out my tablet to shoot pictures of what instructors write on blackboards," he told AFP.

Like millions of people across East Asia, 23-year-old Matsumura is forgetting the pictographs and ideographs that have been used in Japan and greater China for centuries.

While some bemoan what they see as the loss of history and culture, others say the shift frees up brainpower for more useful things, like foreign languages, and even improves writing as a whole.

Naoko Matsumoto, a professor of law who heads international legal studies at the prestigious Sophia University near Tokyo, said the students in her classes now write more fluently than their predecessors.

Akihiro Matsumura (L) uses his tablet

computer as his friend practices writing

Chinese characters in Tokyo on June 19,

2013. (Photo By Yoshikazu Tsuno)

"I'm in my 40s and compared with my generation, they have more and more opportunities to write using Twitter" and other social networking services, she said.

"I think they are actually better at writing" because they write in a simple and easy-to-understand way, she said.

Priorities are changing with more emphasis placed on building logical thinking strategies -- a case of content becoming more important than form.

"The skill of handwriting kanji (Chinese characters) perfectly is becoming less necessary compared with earlier times," the professor said.

Kanji developed in China as a mixture of pictographs -- characters that represent a thing, like "mountain" -- and ideographs -- those that depict an abstract concept, like "think".

Greater China uses only these characters -- a simplified version on the mainland and the traditional form in Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Japan imported kanji some time during the first millennium to use as a writing system, despite there being no linguistic link between Japanese and Chinese.

By around the 8th-9th centuries, it developed a syllabary -- a system of consonant/vowel blends -- called "hiragana".

Where kanji contain a meaning, but no inherent sound, each hiragana character represents a sound, but has no inherent meaning -- like a letter in the Latin alphabet. Unlike the alphabet, however, each syllable only ever has one sound.

A second syllabary, called "katakana", also developed. Modern-day written Japanese is a mixture of kanji, hiragana and katakana, with an increasing amount of Western script also thrown in (known as "romaji" or Roman letters).

In both Chinese and Japanese, computer and smartphone users need only to type the pronunciation of the kanji from the constituent sounds using either the syllabary or the alphabet. They then choose one of several options offered by the device.

Very different meanings can come from the same sounds. For example, in Japanese, "shigaisen" produces "street fighting" and "ultra-violet rays".

"It's easy to forget even the easiest of characters," said Zhang Wentong, an assistant at a calligraphy centre in Beijing.

"Sometimes you've got to think for ages. Occasionally I'll repeatedly type the character out phonetically in my phone" until the right one pops up.

Graduate student Matsumura said his reliance on devices leaves him adrift when faced with filling in forms for repairs at the electronics shop where he works part-time.

University student Akihiro Matsumura

writes sentences on a tablet computer

in Tokyo on June 19, 2013. (Photo By

Yoshikazu Tsuno)

"I sometimes can't recall kanji on the spot while a customer is watching me," he said. "I remember their rough shapes but can't remember exact strokes... It's foggy."

Traditionalists fear that forgetting kanji means the irrevocable loss of a fundamental part of culture.

In Hong Kong, Rebecca Ko said her 11-year-old daughter uses the computer more and more, but she insists the child learn traditional characters, and sends her to a Chinese calligraphy class.

"We cannot rely too much on computers, we should be able to write... (and) we should be able to write neatly, it's a basic thing about being Chinese," she said.

But, says Matsumura, times change and the spread of technology gives people opportunities to develop their language capability in other ways, for example allowing some to read more.

"I'm one of them. I used to listen to music blankly on trains, but I now read news and other things," he said.

Guardians of the characters say there is no evidence of any drop-off in enthusiasm.

The Japan Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation, a Kyoto-based organisation, says the number of people who take its exam every year is holding steady at around two million.

People are "increasingly using text messages rather than making phone calls", which means they need to know which characters to use, said a spokeswoman.

And kanji characters are not falling out of favour with all younger people.

Yusuke Kinouchi, a 24-year-old graduate student at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, thought children should keep learning the characters in the way they have done for hundreds of years.

Kanji provide a certain economy, he said, where one character can stand in for the sounds made by several letters in a language such as English -- something particularly useful on Twitter, for example, with its 140-character limit.

But beyond the economy, there is one other good reason to keep them alive, he said.

"They are beautiful."