Thursday, July 17, 2008

Farewell to the Mouse

Greetings,

Below is an address for an article from the BBC online news. Briefly it says that the mouse will be gone within 3-5 years. The keyboard will still be around, but in the future we will all be waving at the screen or touching it to indicate movement.

I don't know. That seems to be a very short time, if it ever happens. The touch screen has been around for a decade or more, if I'm not mistaken, and the only place I ever see one is in restaurants. And, they are rare.

Another option might be a helmet which would allow the user to direct activity by thinking. Now, that might be interesting.

When I got my first PC, the mouse didn't exist. All control was exercised from the keyboard, with arrow keys or some sort of combination of "alt" or "ctrl" or "shift" along with a second key press performing functions taken over by the mouse. I resisted the changeover at first because I found it more efficient and quicker to keep my hands on the keyboard for everything, rather than being forced to interrupt typing by taking one hand away to manipulate the mouse.

However, new software took advantage of the mouse and made it more efficient to r
amble around with the mouse and much less efficient to use key presses. I suspect the same thing will happen with the new methods.

Address for BBC article about the demise of the mouse.

http://tinyurl.com/5nowdh

1 comment:

  1. I think that there might be some truth to the death of the mouse. Touchscreens are so much better than they were even a couple years ago. I think that the IPhone, which I love BTW, went a long way towards getting people to accept touchscreens.

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