RSS Feed
Human-Computer Interfaces: The Mouse Is Dead
"The Mouse Is Dead" is the title of this post by Mike Elgan at the Datamation site.
Despite the sensationalistic title, the post is well thought out.
Let me start by saying that, in my observation, any proclamation of any technology being dead is bound to be exaggerated and premature, especially for a technology that has been firmly entrenched. When I worked in the Paging Division at Motorola, the growth of the cellular phone market resulted in regular proclamations that the pager market was dead. Immediately. Like, sometime around close of business that same day. Despite that, we somehow managed to continue with years of growth before the market started dying out. But products and technologies mostly do tend to come and go.
For many people, the thought of computing without a mouse is inconceivable. It's a little easier if you happened to be there before the mouse was in common use. Yeah, I hate to date myself, but I remember having conversations about what input devices would catch on, other than the keyboard. There were alternatives, like the "puck", trackballs, stylus pad (familiar to at least some graphic designers) and even the joystick. (By the way, does anyone really use that nipply thing in the middle of laptop keyboards?)
But you don't need to look back in the archives or into the future to find alternatives. As Mike suggests in point #1, an alternative has been sitting there for some times as the trackpad or glidepad on laptops. Many people chose to override it with a mouse, or consider it a form of mouse, so it's easy to dismiss. But it's not a mouse, and the addition of gesture capabiity makes the trackpad a strong contender.
Then there's the iPhone (and iTouch). I currently still prefer the QWERTY keypad on my BlackJack to the iPhone touchscreen if I have to choose. But that's for text entry, because I have always been frustrated by text entry on touchscreens. For Web browsing, however, the iPhone touchscreen is a breath of fresh air on a mobile device (except maybe for one-handed use). In any case, the iPhone is driving home the point that other ways of interfacing are not only possible but useful.
I'm not sure I want a computer to read my brainwaves, and I'm quite sure I don't want to dictate out loud to my computer for extensive periods (or be anywhere near someone else doing it). But I could definitely see the utility of having it track my eye movements and pick up on my gestures (yes, that gesture too) in front of the screen.
In other words, in the same natural way in which people interact with each other.
rk
