Key bored? It's here for good: Intel
Every few years, computers become smaller, more mobile and more integrated, but it seems the humble keyboard will retain its 150-year-old form factor into the foreseeable future.
The keyboard was created officially in 1714 by Henry Mill as a tool for the blind, while the modern QWERTY variation was laid out by Christopher Latham Sholes in his patent of the first modern typewriter.
The arrival of electronic keyboards and their marriage with monitors occurred around the 1960s. Technologists have since adorned them with more keys and buttons, and digitised them for mobile devices, but the central input modality has remained unchanged.
"I don't see keyboards going away for some time," Intel director of the experience design lab, Mike Payne, said. "I think sometimes as an industry we imagine a lot of new forms of input to replace the keyboard, [but] the reality is the keyboard is very productive and engaging for what people use today."
Payne works in Intel's interactive experience centre under Australian research boffin Genevieve Bell where his team create technology prototypes based on the way consumers use devices.
There have been plenty of developments that overlay and complement key typing, such as Swype and voice recognition, but there are no signs of a device that can do away with the keyboard, Payne said.
He said that even Intel's own MRI imaging kit that translates thoughts into words (aimed to be integrated into a baseball cap) is a complementary technology.
"Will mind-imaging remove the need for a keyboard? I would never say never. The [MRI] technology is a way off, and we are focused on imagining possibilities. We need to flesh-out the different experiences to be had with different input modalities."
"My sense is that they would be complementary for a considerable amount of time — that there would be reasons for one and the other and new experiences for both."
Intel's brain-imaging device (Credit: Intel)
Even voice-recognition technology is no substitute for key-bashing.
"With voice, even if it is the most efficient input in a certain situation, it's not something that most people want to do in public spaces."
According to Payne, both brain-imaging and voice-transcribing technology would be well suited to specific areas, namely mobile, television and gaming.
He said we could also expect to play with the transparent light interface used by Tom Cruise in Minority Report.
"I don't think that is too far outside the realm of what is possible today."
But the question of whether new technologies will replace the keyboard is misguided, he said.
"Whether the keyboard continues to exist is less relevant than thinking about the other ways of interfacing with technology … [ways] that supplement or complement what the keyboard is doing."
For the meantime, the keyboard looks likely to sow its oats in yet more devices.
Payne said consumers can expect QWERTY keyboards to be embedded into a series of television remotes that include paired dual-handed devices, and single controls with a full key set on its underside &mdash although he wouldn't be drawn on specific technologies set to emerge from the Intel labs.
"The keyboard is crucial to what needs to happen in the TV experience as we introduce the internet and content searching. You won't be able to simply browse through an EPG [Electronic Programme Guide] and find what you want. Voice could work here too."