Will the keyboard be dead in ten years time?
Posted on 12th Jun 2010 at 10:24 by Alex Watson with 65 comments
I was talking to Tim, the editor of PC Pro last night about Computex 2010, and that while the show had lacked a killer product, there had been a real sense that the massive companies which have dominated computing for the past thirty years – Intel, Microsoft, etc – are suddenly looking very vulnerable.
Tim mentioned that a while back, a senior member of Sony’s Vaio design team had bet him that keyboards would be dead within ten years. At the time, it seemed a sure thing – QWERTY reigned supreme. Now though, he’s not so sure.
I think both Tim and the man from Sony can argue that they’re on course to win the bet. In offices and homes around the world, keyboards are still the default way people enter information into computers, and it's hard to imagine entering an essay into a computer using any of the alternatives.
However, keyboards are not the only way we interact with computer devices. Touchscreen interfaces are becoming more common, and judging from the number of tablets we saw atComputab Computex this year, they’re going to explode in popularity very soon.
The free availability of a tablet OS (Android) and the choice of cheap, non-x86 CPUs from ARM has driven the cost of non-QWERTY hardware through the floor, and the iPhone and iPad have proven the market’s interest in quick, internet focussed devices.
Still, it's not like we're going to start using the iPad instead of a real computer.... right? Well, maybe not the iPad, but you need to consider how basic current touchscreen devices are. With the iPhone, a user can really only perform basic object manipulation – pressing your finger on an app really isn't that far off a double-click, and swiping through photos and pinch-to-zoom aren't too complex either - but we're clearly only at the very beginning.
The processing power of touchscreen devices is rising at a vertiginous rate. My iPhone 3G is two years old; it has a 412MHz CPU, and when I replace it, the device will likely by clocked at 1GHz - Motorola is even rumoured to have a 2GHz phone due by the end of the year. Touchscreen devices aren't just faster, they're also packing ever more sophisticated sensors - the iPhone 3G has GPS, the 3GS added a compass, iPhone 4 adds a gyroscope. Together, these two tech trends will mean future devices will be able to both gather more data (where they are in space, where the user is and where objects are) and process it at ever faster speeds, all leading to incredible possibilities for UI design.
But don't just listen to me. I suggest you watch the video below – it’s simply incredible, and gives a very credible vision of where interfaces will be headed in the next decade. Beam me up, dudes.
Tim mentioned that a while back, a senior member of Sony’s Vaio design team had bet him that keyboards would be dead within ten years. At the time, it seemed a sure thing – QWERTY reigned supreme. Now though, he’s not so sure.
I think both Tim and the man from Sony can argue that they’re on course to win the bet. In offices and homes around the world, keyboards are still the default way people enter information into computers, and it's hard to imagine entering an essay into a computer using any of the alternatives.
However, keyboards are not the only way we interact with computer devices. Touchscreen interfaces are becoming more common, and judging from the number of tablets we saw at
The free availability of a tablet OS (Android) and the choice of cheap, non-x86 CPUs from ARM has driven the cost of non-QWERTY hardware through the floor, and the iPhone and iPad have proven the market’s interest in quick, internet focussed devices.
Still, it's not like we're going to start using the iPad instead of a real computer.... right? Well, maybe not the iPad, but you need to consider how basic current touchscreen devices are. With the iPhone, a user can really only perform basic object manipulation – pressing your finger on an app really isn't that far off a double-click, and swiping through photos and pinch-to-zoom aren't too complex either - but we're clearly only at the very beginning.
The processing power of touchscreen devices is rising at a vertiginous rate. My iPhone 3G is two years old; it has a 412MHz CPU, and when I replace it, the device will likely by clocked at 1GHz - Motorola is even rumoured to have a 2GHz phone due by the end of the year. Touchscreen devices aren't just faster, they're also packing ever more sophisticated sensors - the iPhone 3G has GPS, the 3GS added a compass, iPhone 4 adds a gyroscope. Together, these two tech trends will mean future devices will be able to both gather more data (where they are in space, where the user is and where objects are) and process it at ever faster speeds, all leading to incredible possibilities for UI design.
But don't just listen to me. I suggest you watch the video below – it’s simply incredible, and gives a very credible vision of where interfaces will be headed in the next decade. Beam me up, dudes.
65 Comments
Discuss in the forums ReplyA: no
Anyone who wants to enter thousand word essays on a touchscreen needs beating with a blunt keyboard. And don't even get get me started on using voice recognition to dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all.
I can't imagine it's going to get amazingly accurate on say FPS games without a mouse for example and even if it does, will it be better than a mouse? Or just on par?
I really can't see UI's ever replacing keyboards either, as other users have stated. Good luck writing 5,000 word essays on a touch screen. Again also for gaming, slight movement in some games would kill you, I think it will be a long time before any "special" device can properly replicate the accuracy and sensitivity of a keyboard.
Interesting but not at all likely.
I wouldn't rule anything out, 10 years is a long time.
Vice recognition might get good enough in ten years that it gets close to the words per minute of a good typist, but it would be way to noisy and would have all sorts of privacy issues.
Keyboards are here to stay. Although maybe not qwerty, maybe dvorak :P
Spot on
So even if you do away with the keyboard physically, there will still have to be one in one form or another just for input of some form.
The keyboard will still be here in 20 years because a lot of the companies I deal with at work, still run pentium 4's etc.. There are countless businesses who don't care about hardware. They run onboard graphics, no sound, ancient processors, 1gig of ram, windows 2000 or whatever. Part of the problem is that they have so many users that even one small upgrade, multiplied by a thousand staff, ends up being really expensive. But it's also due to the fact that the average typist, data entry, spreadsheet, call centre, etc..etc..etc.. doesn't need any fancy hardware at all.
It's only really gamers and enthusiasts (like most of the people that visit this website), who care about progress. A PC in 2010 is not a whole lot different to a PC in 1981, and that's because it's a good design. Keyboard and mouse is by far the best input method. Touch screen is great on my little iPhone, but if I had to touch my monitor to control my PC, my arms would get tired after around 2 minutes. I could put the monitor on my lap, but then the back of my neck would get sore after 2 minutes. Waving my arms around like minority report would be even worse. The best way to use a PC is to sit in a nice big comfortable chair, with a PC screen at head height, at a good distance from your face so that you can read stuff clearly but it's not too close. My hands lazily lie on top of the keyboard and mouse, and the spongy leather arm rests of my chair suspend my elbows.
As someone else said above, the only way I can see this control method really changing, is when they come up with a better link to our brain. Apparently there is a way to do that already, but it's very early days.
That presentation was brilliant though, and I can see new ways like that having a big effect on the future of how some industries interact with their computers. Presentations, C.A.D, etc. But it's not for me, or the average PC user.
Also, we'll need a keyboard somewhere in the process to code the application drawing the on screen tactile keyboard !
He mentions (in the video) the absurdity of a keyboard and screen - how they aren't even in the same plane. What he doesn't touch on, however, is a very important concept: Feedback. When I type a key, I feel it depress and then stop and hear a clicky sound, along with the obvious appearing of characters. Even on a touchscreen keyboard, I feel the physical contact with the screen. In the handwavey interface he demonstrates, the only feedback he's getting is visual, and visual feedback for kinetic input is at least twice as bad as the metaphor shear caused by two different planes.
Also, how, precisely, am I supposed to write this without a keyboard?
// update mapMatrix with chosenFilter for(int i = 0; i < mapMatrix.getX(); i++) { for(int j = 0; j < mapMatrix.getX(); j++) { outMap[i][j] = applyFilter2D(chosenFilter, mapMatrix, i, j); } }I'm open to suggestions, but somehow I don't see waving my hands around in the air getting as user-friendly and fast as a keyboard any time soon, especially when it comes to non-English text work such as coding.
How do I know?
Just try to imagine a room of 30 cubicles with 30 people using any of this technology for 8 hours a day.
Besides, according to many of the same people promoting these alternative methods of input, the PC was supposed to be dead already. Or never have gotten started. None of this will be changed significantly until you make it easier, cheaper, and better than a mouse and keyboard. Which happen to work quite well.
it's cool but it's not going to work.. I think he likes to work with his hands- enough said.. like bet he has a virtual hands on the brain even in the bathroom :D
try typing without looking at a touch screen keyboard, and watch yourself fail
maybe keyboards will dissapear when voice recognition comes in, but even still techies will need a keyboard for more complex input
cout << "Hello World!\n" ;
spoken as -> letter c, string out, symbol left arrow, symbol left arrow, symbol quotation, string Hello World, symbol exclamation, symbol backslash, letter n symbol quotation, symbol semi-colon
SOUNDS like keyboards are around to stay
Jokes aside though, we will still be using keyboards for the duration of our life's at least, for reason robots already stated in his post above.
Even so some will prefer keyboard then, because brain reading tech might cause inappropriate content to appear on screen.
Do not misunderstand.
That is not to say that they will be completely eliminating those technologies. There will always be a place for the old tools. They will not ever go away completely. People havent completely forsaken their televisions because of Betamax, or VHS, or DVDs or TiVo, or Hulu. These technologies simply improve what already exists which is exactly what this guy is talking about.
To say that a room of 1000 IRS workers entering data can't get rid of their keyboards simply is not a forward thinking way of looking at the situation. I am absolutely certain there is a better way of doing that kind of work. The problem is that will likely be expensive to implement in the short term. The technology is currently unwieldy and awkward. Most people arent in good enough shape to use these kind of systems for extended periods of time anyway. That may sound like a problem, but to me it sounds more like a solution to Americas growing obesity problem. Over the course of time I would not be the least bit surprised to see whatever the IRS currently uses for their systems slowly evolve into something completely different than what they use now. My guess is the IRS will not be an early adopter of the technology and the private sector will do most, if not all, of the leg work But whether it is five years, fifteen years, or fifty years is anyones guess but change will come. To say that the keyboard will be around forever is like saying the stone arrowhead won't ever be replaced by something better.
Its not a matter of if it will be replaced..... Only a matter of when and by what.
Except that Tim Danton has form on this, banging on about laptops being the future and replacing everything then changing his mind two years down the line, so I'd take any prediction of his with a sea of salt now.
The keyboard's main evolution has been the connection interface and that's about it, and mobo makers have been reluctant to kill off the PS/2 port even if they might only put one on there nowadays. I certainly don't want to get rid of something with a 30-year economy of scale that makes the replacement cost as low as a fiver.
So.. even if the tech for stuff like this becomes cheap and affordable, you'll still need a keyboard attached to your machine for whenever you need to type actual words.
"I think it's about handwriting input versus a keyboard, and handwriting recognition has been tried over and over again, and it turns out that Apple, after all that pain we went through with the Newton, has the best handwriting technology in the world now. It's way better than anything else. But the problem is that doesn't matter, it's still really slow to write stuff. You could never keep up with your email if you had to write it all out. And so, it turns out that people want keyboards. When I started in this business one of the biggest challenges was that people couldn't type, and one day we realised that death would eventually take care of this! And so, people know how to type now and if you do email of any sort of volume you have to have a keyboard. So we look at the tablet and we think it's going to fail."
I put the last bit in just for fun :p He was actually referring to Microsofts handwritten input tablet, which Bill Gates had demonstrated the previous night at D1, and Walt Mossberg was discussing with Jobs.
wires will be a thing of a past within the next 2-3 years most people already own totally wireless setups for mouse and keyboard as it is.
gamers may argue that wireless is slower but i own 2 mice 1 wired 1 not and the diffrence is un noticeable.
id expect some sort of device to replicate the mouse and keyboard in 10 years. Sort of like whats already happening in high end businesses with alot of touch keyboards on display
we already own 2 of these sorta keyboards as testers. theres no real buttons to press the keyboard is basically on to the glass pannel. Our typists speed is nigh on the same as it is on a normal one.
Apparently decent wireless mouses/keyboards are just as good as wired. But for me I don't see the point. I sit at my PC, the wires don't impinge on my gaming or general usage. Also I don't have to recharge them...ever. So I will still be using wired ones in 2-3 years thanks.
If I was going to have type on a hard surface with no give, then I'd rather that holographic keyboard tech was improved.
PRECISELY!
You never see them just typing.
In the video you see him asked, "what is the killer application for this technology", the killer application is normal data input, A.K.A. typing and it's not going to ring in your new idea, it's there to kill it.
Almost all of these ideas only tackle the mouse.
The keyboard, whether in the form it has been in since it's conception, touch screen, table top laser or any other variation will be around for as long as we have the need to enter raw data, program devices, communicate via email / sms.
I think this is a common thought that has been touched upon by many of the previous comments and has remained unchanged for the last 25 years and is unlikely to change in the next 25 years either.
Analogue output without physical contact.
I thought I'd just add that in there. Thanks :D
The solution he had involved a huge projection system and lots of waving arms around.
The current system is just much more efficient.
I can imagine how much worse it must have been for Mr Cruise doing those huge sweeping/rotating motions.
Onscreen keyboards and laser scanning vitual keyboards are ok, but feel massively uncomfortable after extended use, and speech recognition isn't even close to being a practical replacement.
Viva la QWERTY!
If only hardware would become fast enough, we'd have it...we hardware is fast enough, voice recognition is still flaky at best.
I liked the "stone arrowhead" analogy. It's true that we don't use those anymore. However, the underlying concept of a stone arrowhead has not changed, simply the implementation of it. The idea is that in combat, using some sort of high-speed projectile can harm your enemies. Whether that projectile is a prehistoric stone arrowhead, or a medieval iron arrowhead, or a lead ball, or a rifled slug, or a high-tech armor piercing bullet, the concept of taking a small hard object and launching it at your enemy hasn't changed.
This technology is nice, but the ergonomics are not there. Insert all of the cliche fat american jokes you want, but for an office worker or a gamer who is operaitng the machine several hours each day, the ideal input solution is one which allows you to operate the machine with a minimal amount of movement, to avoid fatigue.
Remember the Wii, with its fancy motion remote control? They put Gamecube controller ports on the top, and most hardcore gamers I've seen play it have used the Gamecube controller. The wiimote was fun for casual gamers, but the real gamers preferred an old style controller.
I won't go so far as to say that touch and motion sensitive technology won't take off, but it won't kill the keyboard. It will just augment it. The same way the creation of the mouse couldn't replace the keyboard, but was able to add a lot of functionality to the PC.
I wouldn't be surprised to see the design of the keyboard change, but the underlying concept of an array of buttons to enter specific characters is here to say. It's fast, and it's accurate. I have seen some super-ergonomic keyboards (not the stupid MS split keyboard) that are two bowl-shaped objects with keys on the inside. Something like that might take off. Some improved technology might take off. But it's just plain silly to say that you won't have some sort of physical keyboard device in ten years. The keyboard has been around for over a century, and I would have a hard time believing that it won't be around for another one, even if it declines to a legacy peripheral that is only used by people wanting to do certain tasks on their computers that would be difficult with voice/touch recognition.
Although the physical keyboard as we know it will likely be less ubiquitous
HIC work is so like Computer AI... Just another 10 years and we'll have cracked it... Love the touchscreen on my iPod Touch - not so good on a bigger machine (e.g. iPad).
then go backstage and do somersaults
Excellent analogy, and some great points.
I agree but hey, I still want to touch my real d*ck when I fap! :P
Not really. 100 years != forever. One of those is a quantified estimate of time, the other is just rampant speculation.
The keyboard has been around since the Civil War (1860s). It's been around for 150 years, and it is more popular than it has ever been. I don't lend much credibility to the notion that it will be dead in 10 years. Something that well established will stick around, slowly using popularity, or it will be killed instantly by something that is undeniably better. And the technology being showcased here isn't undeniably better. Something that might kill the keyboard would be thought-to-text. That's in the pipeline, and there have been some very promising trials, but it is IMO a lot more than 10 years away from being on every PC.
There isn't a viable replacement for the keyboard yet.