As many here have said…the mouse pointer will expire when it expires. Perhaps for those performing certain tasks, its loss would be fine. However, when I stop by our accounting department to submit an invoice or inquire about something, I see our people using the mouse a great deal. If they had to lift their arm(s) to touch the screen every time they needed to do something, We might be running into a lot more repetitive strain injury problems than what we see with the mouse/wrist.

This reminds me of the cry to ‘do away with the keyboard’. It too will fade away when it does, but it won’t be that quickly. We don’t have an efficient replacement for either the mouse or keyboard in in certain situations. Touchscreen is much less efficient than the minimal wrist movement for a mouse or trackball. A good typist is far, far faster than someone dictating a message and for those who feel voice control is the way of the future for mouse or keyboard, what about confidential emails/information/actions?

I think we tend to think about our mouse and keyboard usage in too casual of terms. There are a lot of people out there we never think of who are doing jobs full of data entry and data manipulation for which mouse and keyboard are still overall the most efficient solution.

Not at all saying a change is not coming at some point :), and not saying that change won’t be good. Just saying I think we tend to forget about many of the people slogging along in the background of our daily lives for whom some things are still very essential. It might sound science fiction-ish, but I tend to think that some type of neural interface will be the next most accurate, most efficient solution at some point.

Sorry I digressed into the keyboard example so far, this just reminds me very much of that debate as well.