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What Will Replace Computer Keyboards? (xconomy.com)
jeffengel writes:Computer keyboards will be phased out over the next 20 years, and we should think carefully about what replaces them as the dominant mode of communicating with machines, argues Android co-founder Rich Miner. Virtual reality technology and brain-computer links -- whose advocates include Elon Musk -- could lead to a "dystopian" future where people live their lives inside of goggles, or they jack directly into computers and become completely "de-personalized," Miner worries.
He takes a more "humanistic" view of the future of human-machine interfaces, one that frees us to be more expressive and requires computers to communicate on our level, not the other way around. That means software that can understand our speech, facial expressions, gestures, and handwriting. These technologies already exist, but have a lot of room for improvement.
One example he gives is holding up your hand to pause a video.
He takes a more "humanistic" view of the future of human-machine interfaces, one that frees us to be more expressive and requires computers to communicate on our level, not the other way around. That means software that can understand our speech, facial expressions, gestures, and handwriting. These technologies already exist, but have a lot of room for improvement.
One example he gives is holding up your hand to pause a video.
What a stupid question.
What Will Replace Computer Keyboards?
Question is: Do they *need* to be replaced? If so, why?
Wow, you are totally wrong.
It is actually extremely obvious: A combination of ears tracking, sneezing, chicken dance capture and subjugated pattern-matching subroutines.
#DeleteFacebook
Don't these morons get tired? I have been hearing this since the fucking Eighties. If it is not one thing, it's another.
Nothing will make the keyboard obsolete. NOTHING.
It may become much less common it is now, but it will always remain the tool of choice of the person who needs precise control, versatility with a minimum of physical effort. Its looks may change, but as long as we have blocks of keys on a flat(ish) surface, we will have keyboards, and they will be better than the more user friendly, casual, etc. input devices.
I do not want my every twitch interpreted. I do not want my mind read and immediately obeyed. I do not want to have to say five words to specify a less common symbol. I do not want my eyes tracked when lives may depend on a false positive... or even a few dozen dollars.
There is a time and a place for alternatives. But obsolete? Gone and forgotten? Anyone who says that is either ignorant, or trying to provoke a reaction.
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I just spent 30 seconds trying (and failing) to locate an alternative that was being pushed in France in the 80s. It looked like two modern gaming mice, with a ton of buttons that were easy to access without moving your fingers too much. You could create a lot of different inputs with button combinations. I wasted a few days getting better at the contraption than anyone I knew. My father saw me, and asked me to spent eight hours getting better at using a keyboard. Guess what turned out to be faster, more accurate, and not noticeably more tiring?
No good deed goes unpunished...
I'm still waiting for the paperless society computers were supposed to bring.
Not me!
I'm afraid I won't know how to use the 3 seashells...
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
Based on history, worse computer keyboards.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
There is only one relevant factor for computer interaction:
bandwidth.
I can type 500 characters per minute on my G80-3000 cherry keyboard with an error rate less than 1% thus producing highly complex content faster than some people can speak or listen. Also I can read text at a speed of 5000 characters per minute allowing me to consume highly complex content faster than any person alive can speak or listen. In fact I HATE youtube videos because they often need ten or twentyfold the time it takes me to read the same content from text.
Give me something which allows me to interact even faster and you got me as a customer.
But honestly I think there isn't anything close to accomplish that. Maybe we'll see direct brain links in a couple of decades but I can not even remotely imagine anything else increasing my performance.
But if your problem is not "efficency" but "made for idiots" then there might be something around the corner. Which I am not even remotely interested in.
"Life is short and in most cases it ends with death." Sir Sinclair
Exactly. Answer: probably nothing. What is millennial Silicon Valley's obsession with 'replacing' things? I'm sorry all of the good concepts were already taken when you were born and all you get are incremental improvements, but 'disruption' for its own sake quickly becomes arrogance quickly becomes supremely annoying quickly becomes a dead end. The best sci-fi and speculative fiction was about solving problems that actually existed at the time, and not about manufacturing them.