There’s this idea running loose right now that a better user experience is one that is most natural for the user. Kinda makes sense – except I’m not clear on what ‘natural’ means. This all springs up from what Jonathan Follett wrote on XDMatters.com. Here are a few direct quotes from that article:   

“Currently, the methods of interaction we encounter in many digital products, services, and devices are highly unnatural and artificial. We adapt our behavior to these methods of input and point, click, and type, because it’s necessary if we want to avail ourselves of the capabilities these products offer.” “The ability of software to recognize increasingly complex patterns… provides us with possibilities for human/computer interaction that could vastly reduce the need for textual communication.” “As we slowly progress toward freedom from the keyboard and technology enables us to convey information to computers without requiring us to type, designers of user experiences will not only need to develop tools and techniques for managing these new kinds of interactions, but also begin to consider the social concerns and consequences these user experiences will bring to the fore.” “We have now reached a point at which other technologies have begun to seriously compete with written language as viable methods for not only recording our ideas, but also interacting with the world around us. …Immersed in these changes as we are, it’s difficult to evaluate the rate of change, but audio and video are slowly superseding text. This is not to say that text is facing extinction—but its function as the primary means of conveying information is no longer certain.” 
What’s natural?—better, what’s unnatural?
Here, Follett makes it seem that expending more energy than is absolutely necessary is unnatural. Typing, which requires an ‘unnatural’ movement of the hands and ‘unnatural’ thinking about how to spell a word and ‘unnatural’ tardiness insofar as instant communication is concerned – typing, which is a contemporary stand-in for handwriting – is unnatural.  So remove written communication from the equation. What’s left? (Do you picture the same caveman I do?—or is your imagination already made too flaccid by ‘better’ user experiences?)    
Better conversion rates, lower literacy rates
Seems to me that we used to move towards better written communication. That better literacy was a sign of progress. But today we just want to sell? We just want to simplify the amount of reading a user has to do on a Web site in order to get to the shopping cart? We want to make their tax software so easy to use that they never, ever need to know what form they’re filling out or why they’re not getting back as much money for child care expenses as they did last year?That’s a better ‘user experience.’ Learning and thinking are now barriers to completing a task…   I’m obviously part of the problem
As a Web writer, I’ve been a bit haunted recently by what I’m doing to the English language in writing for the lowest common denominator and simplifying most thoughts down to a list of short bullet points and monosyllabics. Writing to make it easy to scan. Writing for people who don’t like to read.  I was a graduate student working towards my MA in English up until December 2007. That’s when I realized that I was better-suited for an MA in Communications and Technology; now I’m pursuing those studies. Because they’re more practical. And I can write bullet lists like a motherfucker.  Increasingly, I’m realizing that what bothers me most about what Follett says is that, of course, I agree with him. …Do I agree? Or am I just agreeing for the sake of a pay cheque?   Getting smart
If I’m thinking this way, then there must be others out there - Web writers and the like - thinking this way. People who have brains and are a bit tortured by the idea of surrendering those years of correcting split infinitives or of reading more blog posts than they do newspaper articles or books.  The wonder of books:
“I think it is that girl, and the women who were talking about books and an education when they had not eaten for three days, that may yet define us.”
Doris Lessing, Nobel Prize in Literature 2007  The sad state of knowledge:
“Bambi’s mother isn’t coming back and neither is the American drive towards rationalism, self-improvement, respect for measurable scientific truth and ability to understand sentences with clauses.”
Heather Mallick, Canadian journalist and reporter