What is Input?

Kevin Lee
Kevin Lee
Jul 27, 2017 · 1 min read

When someone asks you for your input, they want to know what you think about something.

What other kinds of input are there?

There is text input when you key in information.

There is light input when you take a photo.

There is touch input when you tap, swipe, or pinch to zoom on your screen.

There is stream input when you constantly do something, such as when you film or watch a live stream.

There is raw input, which refers to some kind of input that needs to be transformed to yield something more useful. For example, every single touch on your screen produces a raw input and these raw inputs are collectively interpreted as a “swipe” or “pinch” or “long press” by the operating system. As users, we take for granted that it “just works”, but there is a remarkable amount of engineering that goes into making it that simple.

In general, information is input into a system, where it is transformed and acted upon by multiple smaller systems. However, not all inputs lead to outputs if the system was not designed that way.

Written by

Kevin Lee

Software engineer, entrepreneur, thinker and writer. I love to explore ideas and solve problems that matter.

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