Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer believes new user-interface technology is ready to change our relationship to computers.
“I believe we will look back on 2010 as the year we expanded beyond the mouse and keyboard and started incorporating more natural forms of interaction such as touch, speech, gestures, handwriting, and vision — what computer scientists call the ‘NUI’ or natural user interface,” Ballmer wrote recently on The Huffington Post. “This process is already well underway through the proliferation of new touch screen phones and PCs, and in our growing reliance on voice-controlled in-car technology for communications, navigation, and entertainment.”
Yet it appears the IT community definitely has a “show me” attitude. A poll last week on the TechRepublic blog asked for responses to this statement: “I am ready to give up the mouse and keyboard for a natural user interface based on touch screens and hand gestures.” Of the first 500 respondents, 60 percent said, “Not quite yet, I’ll wait and see how these new natural user interfaces work first.” And another 31 percent said: “No, natural user interfaces are not better than the keyboard and mouse and I have no plans to switch.”
So, there’s 90 percent clearly less than enthusiastic. Ballmer may be a proverbial voice crying in the wilderness, but he’s undeterred.
“Simply put, NUI is about easing discovery so that the computing technology that surrounds you acts as a more natural and dynamic partner, not a tool, for helping you work, live and have fun,” he says. “And, I believe these advances will help usher in a new generation of human-computer interaction this decade.”