Replacements For Mouse And Keyboard?

Qrious writes "I read Tad Williams' "Otherland" a while ago and was facinated by the interface that is used for controlling computers with your hands. Now I am wondering how far technology is in this field. Aren't replacements for mouse and keyboards around ? Gloves and a virtual keyboard ? A flick of the wrist that changes back and forth betweeen keyboard and pointing device ? Are these things already made ? If not, why not ? I for one would like to work with something faster than a keyboard. Typing in the air or on a table with some kind of gloves instead of a keyboard would take some getting used to, but would be a lot faster when you are used to it. Anyone else have ideas to some other way of interacting with computers that would make it easier on the hands and faster to control ?"

There are certainly a lot of radical extensions of the keyboard as we know it -- chording keyboards like the BAT and the Twiddler, Deep Ergonomic ones like the Kinesis, and many variants on the one-handed keyboard.

IBM of course is now selling ViaVoice for Linux, as well. But are there interfaces that are even more out there available now?