Technology Corner

Vanquishing the QWERTY Beast

If you have ever spent any time in a busy office you can guarantee that you will hear the tapety-tapping of either a typewriter or a keyboard. While most of us don't give it a second thought, it is the inputting of data that keeps any modern company going. The same applies to us, although admittedly to a different extent. We all use our keyboards for one purpose or another, be it for e-mail or to play DOOM, but will this ever change? In my opinion the answer has to be Yes, although it may not be as soon as some of us might like.

When anyone comes face to face with a computer for the first time there is a problem. Our brain is faced with the task of deciphering the information that comes into our heads via our eyes from our computer screen. The brain runs through an extremely complex decision making process and comes up with a response that it believes is the most apt. For instance if the words "Are you sure that you wish to Format your Hard Drive (Y/N)?" appeared unexpectedly on your screen, you would quickly answer No to the prompt. No problems so far. Now move a step forward to a game such as DOOM. Your brain is constantly being barraged by an ever changing graphical environment and is then faced with the problem of translating this information into directional actions that are then carried out by our fingers on the arrow keys or the fire button. As our ability increases a map is developed within the brain that provides us with the information necessary to find each key quickly.

Although we may be accomplished typists or old pros at our chosen game, it is still not the best way to feed information into the system. So are there any alternatives?

There are several alternatives available now, and many others may follow. I will cover some of the more theoretical ideas in later articles and for the moment I will stick to the ones that are currently on the market.

First, there is the Touch Screen. A remarkable gizmo that I saw in action recently at a computer show. It completely replaces the mouse and allows the user to interact with any graphical environment by simply touching the screen. Since the ability to point and touch is something that we are born with there is virtually no learning involved in becoming totally familiar with its operation. The price of such equipment has dropped drastically in the past few years and we are now seeing laptops with these devices as standard equipment.

Second, there is the Joystick. Yes, I know that there is nothing new about this, but I thought it worthy of note because it adds an element of reality to a great many games, especially Flight Simulators. The reason for this is that our brains do not have to go through too many processes to gain the correct direction or result. If you want to move forward you move the joystick forward. What could be simpler?

Third, and last for now, there is the latest development of all. Speech recognition. IBM and DRAGON have both developed separate systems that have now been released onto the open market. While not 100 percent effective they have been shown to reduce the input time for those of us who are not super fast typists. At the moment the science of speech recognition is still in its infancy. If you want the system to understand your own brand of speech, you have to give it a great deal of coaching and even then it will sometimes make mistakes. I use the Creative Labs AWE32, which comes with a Voice control system. While it is adequate most of the time, I have managed to close a document just by coughing. However, the computers ability to recognize the spoken word can only get better and I am sure that we will see it become more common fairly soon.

On their own these gadgets aren't enough to make us shelve the QWERTY beast, but put them together and you may find that it becomes virtually redundant. To finish up I would like to move a step into the future. If we were to add some sort of vocal response or talk back to your system, you have more than just a powerful workstation. You have a colleague.

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