nsane.forums Posted November 3, 2012 Share Posted November 3, 2012 When Bill Buxton worked at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center in the early 1990s, he examined the classic children's homemade telephones: two cups connected by a taut string. He wondered why that same concept couldn't improve computer keyboards. Think about it. The cup is both a microphone and a speaker. It uses the same "hardware" for input and output of sound. Why, Buxton asked, couldn't the same principle apply to text on computers -- using a single device for both input and output of text rather than using input from a keyboard to produce output on a screen? Buxton wasn't alone in recognizing an eventual fusion of the two. Fast-forward a couple decades -- and add myriad researchers and huge corporate R&D budgets -- and we have touch-screen keyboards on tablets and smartphones. Inputs and outputs share the same surface. The keyboard has fused with the screen, at least for some computing tasks. But as anyone who's typed on a virtual keyboard -- or yelled at a voice-control app like Siri -- can attest, no current text input holds a candle to a traditional computer keyboard when it comes to comfort, speed and accuracy. Maybe eventually we'll connect computers to our neurons, but in the meantime, the simple yet highly functional electromechanical keyboard will be around -- and keep improving -- for some time. 3 page article continued at source link below... View: Original Article Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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