The keyboard; the mouse; the touchscreen: each new generation of computing has been accompanied by its own new kind of input device. But as we enter the internet-of-things era, no standard has yet been established.
Several companies are trying to free us from the screen altogether, creating ways to control our digital lives by using little more than the “input devices” we were born with — the natural gestures of our hands and fingers.
Gesture-control technology has come a long way since Nintendo’s Wii got gamers off the sofa and waving their arms around in the living room. Now Microsoft’s Kinect can track precisely how our limbs move. The 3in Leap Motion controller, which plugs into a PC, can detect the tiniest changes in the position of a finger.