Edit: At least google voice running on your laptop lets you text using a Model M. The MIT link no longer works.
Originally posted March 13, 2012 on AIXchange
I’ve written before about my fondness for the durability and quality of a certain type of old keyboard.
In fact, for a very long time, I told myself that in a perfect world I’d find a way to hook my Model M keyboard up to a Bluetooth adapter, and then connect that to my mobile phone. Even if it wouldn’t be practical to carry that setup on the road, it’d sure be satisfying to take the typing speed that only a real keyboard can provide and bring it into the mobile world.
To my chagrin though, others eagerly anticipate a keyboard-free future:
“Why do we still use a keyboard and mouse to interact with digital information? This mode of human-computer interaction, invented more than 40 years ago, severely constrains our ability to access and interact naturally with digital content.
“Our group designs new interfaces that integrate digital content in people’s lives in more fluid and seamless ways. Our aim is to make it easier and more intuitive to benefit from the wealth of useful digital information and services. Our work is focused in the following areas:
“Augmented Experiences: We augment a person’s experience of their surroundings with relevant digital information. We try to make the experience as seamless as possible, blending the digital information into the physical environment and making interaction with that information natural and fluid.
“Responsive Objects: We alter everyday objects by embedding sensors, actuators and displays so that the objects can respond to people using them in meaningful, noticeable ways.
“Collaborative Interactions: We experiment with novel interfaces that are designed from the start for use by multiple people. The projects support collaborations ranging from small numbers to very large numbers of people and further differ in whether they support collocated versus remote collaboration as well as synchronous versus asynchronous collaborations.
“Programmable Materials: We invent interfaces and machines for control and manipulation of materials such as paper, fabric, wood and food. Our goal is to endow materials and manufacturing with some of the advantages associated with the digital world such as modifiability, programmability, responsiveness and personalization.”
Sure, I guess I look forward to the day when my glasses can transform into some type of heads-up display, and I can access other types of information just by focusing my eyes or looking in different directions. It will be nice when my personal digital assistant truly becomes that, or when Siri and Evi and the like actually function seamlessly.
It will be a great convenience to speak to my machine and find it not only understands me, but knows what I mean and not just what I say. (Or maybe we’ll have to get brain implants before we can have a better human/machine interface. Not really convenient, but still potentially useful.)
For me though, the physical still beats the virtual, hands down. I know a big part of that is all the time I’ve invested in physical keyboards. I’ve had my awesome Model M for going on three decades now. Given more time, I suppose I’ll eventually become proficient on virtual keyboards. But I type so much faster and scroll around the screen so much more easily with my keyboard and mouse. I can type reasonably quickly with a Blackberry since it has an actual keyboard, but with any virtual keyboard touch screen, I just plod along. And while my Android phone is adequate at voice recognition, that doesn’t help me when I’m at a meeting or in any environment where I don’t have the luxury of speaking aloud. Sure, virtual keyboards are fine for short messages, but when I need to type anything more substantial than “:)” and LOL, I don’t like them. Autocorrect can rescue me some of the time, but often it just introduces new problems.
Call me a dinosaur if you insist, but until I get my perfectly augmented reality, I’ll live happily with my old mouse and older keyboard.