Mouse / Keyboard forever?

Hey, I was just watching Minority Report (so I don't watch movies a lot. shoot me ), and I noticed the guy using the gloves with guestures to control his futurey computer program. I've always thought some kind of input system like that could be interesting.

Do you think there'll ever be any more innovation in terms of interface beyond the mouse and keyboard? I don't see replacement of the keyboard, especially, happening quickly, if ever (and I like keyboards), but it'd be cool to see new stuff... touch screens, voice input, gesturey stuff... maybe even spaceballs as commodity items with a three-dimensionaler software interface. Think anything new will take off at all in the coming years?

 

they have key boards that are lights projected on a surface and you hit the "key" like a normal keyboard, but it's just a projection

 

I forget the name but there are touch screen computers. It's pretty cool. I don't think it's going to be very convenient but it's there. I was playing with one at frys just a while ago.

 

actually there is one just like it, i saw a video of some guy demonstrating it at some conference :O

its pretty cool

 

Touchscreen video

another

and another

 

I found this video that's pretty cool.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-gqcGLh4l0

And it's pretty close to Minority Report.

EDIT:

I'm a little late on the video posting.

 

Let us use a wii like controller on our notebooks. It'll get rid of trackpads and just maybe mice

 

That Jefferson Han video is even better than the first one I saw of his screen (it didn't have any explanations). That is exactly what I was thinking of when I read l33t_c0w's post.

His technology really has some serious potential. Let's hope it reaches us all.

 

Multimodal interfaces are on the increase. Currently they are not widely available to the public yet (like gaze trackers, speech input etc), they are quite common in more professional environments (missle control, flight control, enegy plants etc) due to their adaptive nature.
Multimodal interfaces only became popular in the 1990s, so it might still be a decade or two before they become widely available to everyone.

 

I think Microsoft has been trying alternative input methods through the Tablet PC.

I find the keyboard and mouse the fastest way to work with text on a PC. A touch screen and text on a tablet PC does not work for me.

I believe, so long as humans communicate with english alphabets or read and write with text, the keyboard is not going to go away so easily.

It seems to me the way we interact with computers is going back like in the old days, the command prompt.

Search engines, typing in a word and hitting search. This is a command. Then you have variables thrown in to the main search key such as AND, OR etc.

Windows Vista has the search box built right into the start menu. Again, more commands.

The tagging feature used on many of the Web 2.0 website are another form of entering and categorizing data through commands.

The question is, is any other alternative text input going to be faster than the keyboard? and with minimal errors?

 

@Ethyriel -- I'd seen the TED talk before, but didn't remember the pictures. That, and the other videos, are HOT. I'm a bit excited about the prospect of those sorts of interfaces.

 

Yeah, it definitely looks impressive, but my dislike for gestures has me a bit hesitant. I'm all for gestures for navigation and such, but when you start getting into complex gestures for various commands... I think it may be too much. I think something like this combined with voice commands would be incredible.