In actuality, not a lot. But, apparently we both believe that the keyboard will eventually become deprecated in favor of more natural inputs.

Over the past 30 years, computers have changed dramatically in terms of processing power, graphics capability, and storage capacity. However, the one thing that hasn’t fundamentally changed is how we interact with the computer. We are still tethered via keyboards, mice, joysticks, and gamepads. Even the Nintendo Wii, as cool as it is, has you tethered to the experience through a wireless controller.

We’re doing our best to change that at PlayMotion, and in some cases, on a grand scale. Some of our experiences have hundreds, even thousands of simultaneous people collaborating together using natural gestures. We believe that the human body is the ultimate input device. Simply put, the human body is capable of performing movements and gestures that cannot be replicated by a traditional input device.

Gates sees diminished role for keyboards

PITTSBURGH - People will increasingly interact with computers using speech or touch screens rather than keyboards, Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates said.

“It’s one of the big bets we’re making,” he said during the final stop of a farewell tour before he withdraws from the company’s daily operations in July.

In five years, Microsoft expects more Internet searches to be done through speech than through typing on a keyboard, Gates told about 1,200 students and faculty members Thursday at Carnegie Mellon University.

Gates also said the software that is proliferating in various branches of science, including biology and astronomy must become even more advanced.

“They’re dealing with so much information that … the need for machine learning to figure out what’s going on with that data is absolutely essential,” he said.

Microsoft is trying to establish ties not only with university computer science departments but also with reseachers in other scientific areas “to help us understand where new inventions are necessary,” Gates said.

Gates plans to retire as Microsoft’s chief software architect in July and focus on philanthropy.

Hey Bill, it’s one of the big bets we’re making as well, although I don’t think the next point on the curve is as simple as speech recognition and touch screens. It is probably a complex mix of things, including natural, untethered gesture recognition, one of our areas of interest. Let’s face it - touch screens and speech recognition have been around a long time - granted, the technologies are much better now, but I can still type faster than I can dictate (then type to correct). However, consumers are adopting touch technology now en masse (e.g. the iPhone), as well as speech recognition (e.g. voice dialing capabilities on cell devices, Microsoft’s Sync technology for cars, etc.) But we have already come to expect those technologies … we’ve seen them mature over the years.

In my opinion, the next exciting point on the curve is the nexus of computer vision, gesture recognition and visual immersion. I’ll post some more thoughts on this soon …

Cheers.