Microsoft has filed a bunch of patents for devices that tap into your brain functions to allow you to control your computer. Form moving objects on a screen, to modifying an applications state to changing the user interface, these patents, which were filed over the last year or so, have just been published and point to a future where manual control a device will seem completely foreign.
A scan of patent listings reveals a bunch of recently released applications. The language in the applications is pretty dense but MSPowerUser has some useful summaries of the information.
With the increased computing power we have available, particularly in smaller devices, the potential for new ways to manipulate applications and data will result in vastly different computing experiences in the coming years. Already, AR and VR are accessible to pretty much anyone with a current smartphone although want you can do does differ substantially from one platform to the next.
If we look at modern computing, we now have enough processing grunt to do most of what we want. And while more processor power, memory and storage are always welcome, what has lagged is the way we use our computers. While the computer I use today is smaller and faster than my first computers from the 1980s, I still use a keyboard and display as my primary ways of interacting with applications. User interfaces have evolved but today’s GUI is not all that different from what came from Xerox PARC in the 1970s.
But these patents, and the research behind them will be part of what drives the coming waves of computing evolution.
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