Yahoo News reported a gadget from Siemens (website auf Deutsch) that triggered my interest.

Then, unfortunately, I thought about it for 15 seconds longer.

Is the problem really that keyboards are fantastic devices, but gosh darn it, there’s never one right there when you need one? I’m not likely to agree. I’ve been pounding away at one for about 12 hours now, and my fingers are starting to get a bit frazzled, Dvorak keyboard or no.

Talking for 12 hours, though, that’s much easier. And I can yammer faster than I can hammer, as can most people. The sooner we toss our keyboards in the pile with carbon paper and platens and switch to speech recognition, the better off we’ll be.

So while this gizmo’s undeniably got some Holodeck cool to it, I’m not seeing the point. And if you think typing without any tactile feedback is fun… I’ll use the Selectric, you use the Atari 400. Race ya.

P.S. Strikes me as interesting that the tag line for the Atari 400 is that you don’t have to be smart to use it, while today the subtext of Think Different is very much that it’s what the smart people go for.