Death of the mouse (and the keyboard, and monitor…)?

Hardware developers have created several alternatives which may soon make the standard means of computer input obsolete.  The release of a controller-free video game system in November could turn some of these ideas into reality, and make those options already existing even more popular.

The system is Microsoft’s Kinect, a system which relies on cameras to read body movements.  This allows players to kick soccer balls, tickle tigers, and more.  There is also voice functionality, so that saying the words “play movie” will start whichever film the player has chosen.

Extensions of this type of computing are already in development.  For example, John Underkoffler, who created a futuristic data-processing system for the 2002 movie Minority Report, has developed a real-life system called “g-speak,” in which the user moves through files and data sets by moving their hands.  The system is already in use at Boeing and other large companies, but its price range (from $100,000 to the low millions) makes it a little impractical for the home computer.  But Underkoffler expects that to change in the next five years.

Elsewhere, researchers are looking into brain-controlled and eye-tracking software.  Restrictions (other than price) do exist, though.  Gesture-based computing can becoming exhausting, especially at a 9-to-5 job, and the gestures can be misconstrued.  Robert Wang from MIT has also pointed to the difficulty of moving an object you can’t touch.

While most developers see the mouse as on its way out, the keyboard may gain a reprieve, since it is currently the most efficient way to write.  The monitor will also likely stick around, although new technology could project information onto walls or people’s hands, taking the world one step closer to Pranav Mistry (MIT’s) goal of “get[ting] rid of computer hardware entirely.”