Other technology, possibly improved speech or hand writing recognition will have an impact on keyboards. But then, keyboards have always sucked as non-text entry devices. They were simply (wait for it) _handy_...
Edit: Now I could easily believe that near future systems could drastically reduce our need or desire for text entry. But it's hard to skim video or audio as effectively as text. And of course, text has its own texture and voice.
> Edit: Now I could easily believe that near future systems could drastically reduce our need or desire for text entry.
That's the only way to really get rid of the need for keyboards- that or literally flawless speech recognition with natural language parsing for commands.
As long as we need to enter text, and don't have voice input, keyboards are the easiest way to enter it quickly/for sustained periods. I dread the day I have to compose a paper on a touchscreen keyboard, unless it is full-sized. And even then, there's no tactile feedback.
Essentially what I am saying is, until either text input is unnecessary or voice recognition takes off, the keyboard paradigm is necessary and useful. Heck, why do you think phones with full physical QWERTY keyboards are still popular among people who really type on their phones?
literally flawless speech recognition with natural language parsing for commands
No way. I can type much, much faster than I can speak. Simpler, strict non-natural commands are much easier than natural language commands (hell, people have difficulties giving and understanding verbal commands all the time) - never mind the fact that languages like English are terribly ambiguous and peoples everyday speech is too filled with local slang.
Also, if I have to talk to my computer, I a) cannot use it in a group environment or, say, when someone is sleeping and b) when I type I can see what I typed and I can edit it if I make mistakes. If I speak commands, I cannot do this. An exaggerated (but still realistic) example: if I type "delete foo" instead of "delete bar" and notice before I hit enter, I can fix the mistake. If I speak "delete foo" then foo will probably be gone before I can correct myself. Finally, what about different words that sound the same? Sometimes spelling or capitalization is the only thing that distinguishes things (eg, file names) - with speech you couldn't do this.
In summary, in my opinion, speech recognition is a terrible form of input for general text input and command input tasks. (It may be useful to augment more traditional input and it can certainly be more than useful (or even required) for disabled people, but for the majority of people and tasks, I don't see the attraction)
It's not that I like speech recognition, it's just the only other option that is even close to a keyboard that I can think of besides a direct brain to machine link.
I sort of thing that if the keyboard was going to disappear completely any time soon (~10 years), it would've disappeared already. We have a lot of different technologies for text input these days, but I don't feel like any of them would be better than a keyboard for working at a desk, even if they worked perfectly.
-Touchscreens can eliminate the need for typing to interact with a computer, but people will always want to communicate with each other in writing. On a touchscreen only device, this means virtual keyboards. Those are a convenient tradeoff for portable devices, but they're not ideal, and when you have space for as much screen as you need and a keyboard, I can't think of a good reason to get rid of physical keys.
-100% accurate voice recognition would be nice for some things, but I think I'd still be too slow, tiring, disruptive, or not private enough for most uses.
-I think true mind reading devices also have potential in the long term, but I'd be highly surprised if we had anything practical in less than a decade.
Err... I have a laptop with a touchscreen, so I've played around with touch input a lot. A few things you may not realize without some experience with a touchscreen on a real computer:
The screen is most visible a foot or two away from your face, vertical. Make it flat and things get hard.
The hands like typing on a horizontal surface. Try typing on a vertical screen, especially one at the proper viewing distance, and you will type really slow, and your arms will fatigue fast. It looks cool in movies, but it is a ridiculous waste of movement unless you barely interact with the machine.
Portable devices work alright with moving the keyboard onto the screen, and they have no other choice, but for a real computer it makes no sense. If/when the standard desktop/laptop computer becomes obsolete, this becomes irrelevant, but until then...
The touchscreen will obsolete the keyboard/mouse combination except for entering or editing large amounts of text within ten years. (Obsolete means something like “cross the 50 percent mark” and “displays strong growth while keyboard/mouse devices collapse”.) The iPad seems to show the way: ultra portable with a (probably wireless) keyboard attachment for when you really need to type.
That would be a prediction I would be comfortable with.
1. Until they provide button-like tactile feedback, typing will simply not be close to typing on a keyboard.
2. Having your fingers/hands obscure the screen is.. less than ideal. This is one reason why I like the touch-surface + screen combo idea from the 10gui concept.
As an aside, the touchscreen on the ipad, while decent, is IMHO still not responsive and accurate enough for me to be comfortable doing any serious amounts of typing on it.
Let me qualify this a little. I don't mean no keyboards will exist within 6 years, but at around the 6th year mark, the vast majority of tech aware people, like you and me, will refuse to buy a computing device (including desktop PCs) whose primary mode of interaction is through the keyboard/mouse. Rather they will only be interested in touchscreen devices.
But did you try reading and browsing with it for hours a day? I never had such a great reading experience!(;
I don't think it was meant to substitue for writing long texts. However, you can buy the iPad keyboard dock to use the standard Apple keyboard layout. And honestly, after having burned through so many keyboards in my life - these Apple keyboards really get me exited every time I use them!
I agree on the iPad, but I'm sure there will be better typing experiences coming soon. Tactile feedback and flexible touchscreens are two things that I'm sure will play a big part.
I disagree. I don't see much innovation happening in desktop hardware and software in the next 10 years. The keyboard and mouse will still be around; it will be how we define desktop software. There will continue to be new versions of OS X, but there will be no "Mac OS X Touch Screen Edition".
Computing appliances like the iPad will play increasingly important roles in our lives and will completely replace the desktop for many people, but it won't kill the desktop anymore than the GUI killed the command-line. Instead, the Desktop will simply stop being a major source of software innovation.
At some point it will. Maybe 5, maybe 8, but within a reasonable amount of time. I think it depends on the acceleration of other iPad like devices in the same way Android phones followed soon thereafter the iPhone. Funny fact: I was just recording an iPad demo and I had to keep redoing the voiceover due to the use of the word click instead of touch.
The touchscreen will obsolete the keyboard within 5 years.