The look into right handed vs. left handedness tickled the categorization part of my brain as well as the “new information to learn” and “new way to think” part of my psyche. The Scholarly Kitchen brought this interesting topic to our attention in their article, “Lefty versus Righty — A Look at Human Handedness.”
“Odd one out.” You’ve heard it said about those that are different from the norm. When it comes to handedness, the world has not been shy about favoring right-handed aptitude over the left. Looking at the video in this article shares how humans got to this point biologically, which is interesting.
Because the vast majority of the population is right-handed, many devices are designed for use by right-handed people, making their use by left-handed people more difficult. In history, horrific things were done to left-handed people in an attempt to force them to write with their right hands.
I find it most interesting that for left-handed people, it is the forefront of their identities. Right-handed people would likely not say that about themselves – again, the norm. In the realm of information sciences and taxonomies, that would not be a category or facet for them.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in thesaurus, ontology, and taxonomy creation and metadata application.
