It wasn't exactly Minority Report but Bill Gates' technology demonstration at the company's CEO Summit earlier Wednesday may be remembered years from now as a harbinger of the end for the keyboard and mouse era. Not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But soon enough. (Cue Winston Churchill here about how this is not the end, the beginning of the end, but perhaps, it's the end of the beginning.)As Gates demoed a 4-foot-by-6-foot prototype called TouchWall, there was little resemblance to Tom Cruise's futuristic data juggling in that 2002 sci-fi performance as he moved 3D screens around with simple hand gestures. Making what is likely his last appearance as master of ceremonies at this annual conclave of corporate heavy hitters, Gates used the show-and-tell session to offer a prediction. In the future, he said, all sur
faces will feature "an inexpensive screen display capability and software that sees what you're doing there so that it's completely interactive." Check out the video above ..
Whatever he has to say, people still think the mouse and the keyboard have a long way to go. Well something that Gates can feel good about, after being dethroned as the richest man in the world after having held this title for 13 years in a row. Thanks to the YAHOO! bid not coming through, and the MS shares dropping in value throughout the drama. It is said that he may have lost a chance of being richer by atleast $10 billion as a result of a failure to acquire YAHOO!. But life's like that. May be fellow billionaire Icahn can help him climb back to the top. But judging by the way Warren Buffet is doing business these days, this task is far from easy.
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