[BatFastard]

As someone who has been a developer of virtual worlds for 17 years. I can say that this is a very incremental change, as all of the changes have been since 1994.

Personally I think we need to reimagine interfaces to the world around us, even the virtual worlds (VR/AR/MR) around us. Voice input, AI, hand sensing technologies could make for new ways for changing the worlds. The book Daemon by Danial Suarez and his eSpace holds much promise. I have been experimenting with those idea in a new VR world I have been working on for a few years.

[gervase]

I think motion sensing is probably the way forward; voice control is intrinsically limiting in most (crowded) environments where computers are used today.

Considering humans can ride bikes, drive cars, play instruments, etc. (including typing on keyboards!), I think that indicates that non-verbal, physical interaction is not nearly saturated as a transmission channel.

Conversely, it's hard to imagine someone verbalizing "navigate to HN" in a loud open-space office, or "Excel, create a pivot table" or whatever. I think it's fine in private spaces like your home, but in public spaces, you're implicitly broadcasting your activity to everyone around you, which I consider to be a strong negative.

[BatFastard]

The Deamon book has some cool motion interaction in it. They call it the Shamanic interface! I really want to make one of those, too bad tech is not readily accessible yet.

Is subvocalization a possibility? Mic or EEG setups might need to be slightly different.

[richardknop]

Voice input is good for people who have clear sounding voice and generic American accent. Which is maybe 5% of the world. For people who speak English with thick accent or don’t speak it at all or have deep / less clear voice this would be massive decrease in accessibility.

I don’t personally believe in voice input. English is my second language but I have spoken it daily for close to 10 years. I can’t get Siri to understand what I say so I just keep it disabled and iPhone keeps bugging me to enable it.

We cannot rely on voice input as that is a dead end. Until we figure out how to link thoughts directly to computer inputs keyboards will be the king.

[jayd16]

A lot of these technologies are being developed and its pretty awesome. However, I'll argue there's clearly space for a keyboard in the virtual world.

If you want to sculpt a model in the real world, you'd use clay and your hands. We can use VR to move away from KBM interaction for things like that.

If you want to write a book in the real world you...type it out. Its the best way we know to get text out of your brain and somewhere else. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

[BatFastard]

Indeed everything in its place. However I really don't think I would go into a virtual world to write a book, or do any other kind of activity that requires a lot of keyboard interaction.

I used to hope for the unlimited monitor space, now I am not so sure how practical that really is.