Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!WEIZMANN.BITNET!XLACHA1
From: XLACHA1@WEIZMANN.BITNET (Omer Zak)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: New Input Devices (in lieu of Keyboards)
Message-ID: <8901121714.AA26346@multimax.encore.com>
Date: 12 Jan 89 17:08:04 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 44

(This is a resend of a mail which was sent to info-futures@bu-cs.bu.edu.
If there was a duplication, then you have my apologies for having been
brainwashed once too many.  :-)             )

A recent poster suggested that the participants of this discussion
group design a new input device which doesn't suffer from the problems
of keyboards, and then ask one of the computer companies to manufacture
it.

Modern computers (such as IBM PC and its clones) have detachable keyboards
i.e. you can pull a plug out and substitute your own input device instead
of the ordinary keyboard.  So there is no need to beg IBM to produce an
alternative keyboard.  Any small company can do it, with the interface
specs.  Some improvements can be implemented by software alone (case
in point:  the Dvorak keyboard layout).

It is my understanding that the real roadblock toward introducing a
better keyboard is the need to re-learn to use such a new device.  The usage
of a standard keyboard is learnt once for all.  For a new keyboard design,
one would need to re-learn and to re-practice to use the new design optimally.
Perhaps the reason the companies are not exactly flooding the market with
alternative keyboards (even though several designs have been proposed by
researchers) is the rather small demand for this kind of change.

Besides the above, there is another question:  how many words (or concepts)
per minute does your brain form when you think?  If you can write or type
as fast as you think, then further improvements in input technology wouldn't
increase your productivity (except when you are trying to transcribe
a courtroom discussion into writing).
According to my own experience, my productivity would increase not by
optimal design of the keyboard, but by fast way of moving the cursor
(a touch-screen would be a good idea for this, more than a mouse), ability
to have online access to a library of phrases (cliques?) which I commonly use,
and would like to enter them by a single operation (such as a keypress or
pointing).  Those phrases could be commonly-used commands, long words
which I use often, oftenly-used FORTRAN code fragments, etc.

Interface efficiency is not only WPM.  Let's think in terms of TPM (Thoughts
Per Minute).  And let's try to make it possible to express every idea in
as few keystrokes as possible, and to be able to figure out what keystrokes
are needed at no time (aside from relying upon one's memory).
                                                           --- Omer
"Be accessible via phone to deaf persons.  Make sure you have a Bell 103
compatible modem at home."