Come on, come on, come on
Come on now touch me, baby
Can’t you see that I am not afraid?
What was that promise that you made?
Why won’t you tell me what she said?
What was that promise that you made?

Now, I’m gonna love you
Till the heavens stop the rain
I’m gonna love you
Till the stars fall from the sky for you and I

Touch Me – The Doors

Touch is an essential form of communication.  A gentle touch for the person you love; touching your new born child to soothe their anguish or to  help them get to sleep; a strong handshake; a hug.  And of course the need to use a keyboard to type a letter, construct a powerpoint presentation, create a web-site, write code as just a few examples.

The QWERTY keyboard has been with us for a very long time. QWERTY is the most common modern-day keyboard layout. The name comes from the first six letters (keys) appearing in the top left letter row of the keyboard, read left to right: Q-W-E-R-T-Y. The QWERTY design is based on a layout created for the Sholes and Glidden typewriter and sold to Remington in the same year, when it first appeared in typewriters. It became popular with the success of the Remington No. 2 of 1878, and remains in use on electronic keyboards due to the network effect of a standard layout and a belief that alternatives fail to provide very significant advantages. The use and adoption of the QWERTY keyboard is often viewed as one of the most important case studies in open standards because of the widespread, collective adoption and use of the product, particularly in the United States.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QWERTY

Continuing our discussion about how things are changing, we are rapidly becoming a “Touch Screen” society.  In 2012, life will take place via ever more pervasive, personal and interactive screens.  2012 will see three mega-tech currents converge: screens will be (even more): ubiquitous / mobile / cheap / always on; interactive and intuitive (via touchscreens, tablets and so on); an interface to everything and anything that lies beyond the screen (via the mobile web and, increasingly and finally mainstream in 2012, ‘the cloud’). In fact, the future for most devices will be a world where consumers will care less about them and just about the screen, or rather what’s being accessed through it.

If you own any of these devices,  you know what I am talking about.  We touch the screen and great things happen.  We access our music, we select the artist, we change the volume level, we download an app, we change the colors, we transfer money, we pay bills, we change channels by using our smart phone as our tv controller, we check the weather, we forward articles, we create likes on Facebook, we post images on Pinterest, we take pictures, we re-size images, we play Words with Friends/Scrabble –  the list goes on and on.  All by using a touch screen interface, with very little interaction with our QWERTY keyboards.

All of this and more by touching a screen – remarkable really 🙂

Enjoy the day.

Webman