begin quoting [EMAIL PROTECTED] as of Wed, Sep 27, 2006 at 12:48:50PM -0700: > I'm trying to imagine a post-PC world where > people move beyond x86 platforms and just > get wired with their PDAs, cell phones, wallet computers, etc. > > One big problem I can see with this rosy future > prediction is that NOTHING has been invented > that replaces the keyboard. There's a lot of people who prefer the mouse, it seems...
> Without the keyboard, emails and memoranda generation > is VERY tedious. Why do you need to give up the keyboard? There's a laser-keyboard that projects a keyboard on to a flat surface; there's not much in the way of tactile feedback, but it supposedly works. They have "smart pens" -- all you need is a sheet of paper. Couple smart pens with handwriting recognition (which has been around since at least the days of the Newton, which apparently was pretty good at it), and you're ready to "compute" using a pad of paper. > Perhaps speech recognition may be the answer > some day but I don't see it now. I doubt it. It's noisy, hard to keep secret, and subject to jokers shouting "no hup ar em dash ar ef star ampersand return exit return" at you. > Is there any other alternative to voice to replace > the keyboard? Check out Vinge's _Rainbows End_. Off the top of my head, he has: a) smart clothes, so that a gesture, a shrug, a wave of the hand constitutes input. b) smart paper, that provide a user-input in a flexible, compact form, letting you use your fingers or a stylus. c) rings, that let you type without a keyboard, just by registering the movement of your fingers. It's an interesting view of the future. I don't know how I'd feel about smart contacts, however. Shades I can deal with; contacts, no so much. > (Otherwise my wallet computer will never let me > throw away my x86 PC from Fry's.) Keyboards have been around longer than the x86 line of CPUs, or Fry's. They'll outlast 'em, too. -- _ |\_ \| -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
