Now, who doesn't? We see the nervous airline reservation agent, searching the keypad for the next peck, the thick-fingered plumber tapping out his invoices, the uncertain exec coming to terms with the need to enter a notation - all manner of people who never imagined, way back when, that they should have taken a typing course.

Talk about American ingenuity. We have, by one resort or another, become a nation of bad typists, but typists nevertheless.

Some employ one finger from each hand, others two or three poised above the pads, or all ten fingers in an order never dreamed of in a high-school typing class.

And yet somehow we sit down at our computers and, one way or another, we get whatever job done that we must.

Now, there's American ingenuity about as widespread and vibrant as it's ever been.