Swype

The above video demos Swype, a new way to interact with digital keyboards. This reminds me of what I've heard about the shift from typewriters to the first computer. Apparently the first computers closely modeled a typewriter including its limitation. Like a type writer you could only edit the line at the bottom, you couldn't cursor up and down between rows.

I think swype shows us that just because we've kept the keyboard interface on touch phones, we don't need to keep the limitations inherit to plastic buttons. You could not rub your finger over you plastic keyboard. Also, digital keyboards are often significantly smaller than their plaster counterparts making typing harder. Keyboards were designed for typing with all 10 fingers over a large (multiple inch) area. It's no wonder that shrinking the keyboard down to phone size causes problems.One hopes the autocorrecting is very smart, otherwise swyping would be very frustrating.