It is with some interest that I continue to see technology "advance". Specifically, there seems to be a move towards touch screen monitors, and I'm sure with the proliferation of Windows 7 which now supports these monitors, touch screen monitors may become as much of a de facto standard as LCD/flat screen monitors have now.
What I find interesting is that this technology is now celebrating it's 25th anniversary. In the mid 80's, Hewlett Packard came out with the first touch screen computer. My first job upon graduation was in a support & training role for a company that sold hardware, so this was my first exposure to touch screens.
I'm curious to see if there are practical uses and tangible benefits for this newest generation of touch screen. As a touch typist, I'm thinking that the vast majority of business users will find that taking their hands off of the keyboard will decrease productivity.
Although some graphical applications that might (in theory) benefit from this technology, I don't think that there is sufficient granularity in the human touch to make this a viable user interface. Think for a second if your mouse pointer jumped as you moved it instead of having smooth movement. The lack of fine detail would become increasingly frustrating.
The biggest problem that I can see is that the main device for this interface has a hard limit as to how small it can go to allow for more detail. The human finger cannot get narrower, so I don't see how the technology can improve significantly.
My first thought was that someone could use a stylus or a something with a finer point to use a touch screen, but one again, I think that this would be extremely cumbersome as one would have to navigate from keyboard to mouse to stylus.
Too many times we see technology advance for the sake of advancement. In other words, there are numerous cases where new technologies have been developed without clear and measurable benefits. Case in point, a few years ago, one of the hot technology advances was integrating a computer and a monitor in the family refrigerator. It may have seemed like a good idea at the time, but if a new technology does not have "legs" (movie term for how long a movie will run in the theatre), then the novelty of the technology will quickly wear off.
I will remain open minded. Perhaps this is cutting edge stuff, I'm not sure. In the meantime, I'll happily plug away on my keyboard and mouse.
