Tomorrow’s World is a BBC TV show that features gadgets that may or may not be about to change all our lives for the better. I watched it last Wednesday (May 8th). The BBC being the BBC there was much talk about impractical and expensive looking electric cars which will probably never catch on unless forced on us by politicians, and there was a machine featured which told you just how much damage you were doing to your respiratory system by smoking, thus motivating you to stop. Be still my heart. (This being what will inevitably happen to you, they kept helpfully reminding us, if you insist on smoking. Cue lying statistics about “smoking related” diseases.)
But one gadget they showed did truly impress me, and I meant to pass it on that evening but something else must have got in the way. (Oh yes, my computer modem stopped working.) This impressive gadget was a new kind of very-portable computer keyboard.
I already possess a folding (“Targus Stowaway”) keyboard with which I type stuff into my Hewlett Packard Jornada 548, which when folded fits into a space hardly any bigger than that occupied by a Hewlett Packard Jornada 548 (i.e. my jacket pocket), and I had supposed that this was as small as a keyboard big enough to type on properly could get. Not so.
On Tomorrow’s World they showed something quite new, at any rate to me. Instead of offering you a physical keyboard, what the new gismo does is shine a keyboard onto your desk, and then watch you while you type on it. The thing itself is no bigger than a cigarette box, and soon all portable computers may contain such a thing inside them. Superb. In an earlier version of this posting I did an hour ago, I did the BBC a semi-injustice. I said they didn’t say who make this midget miracle. They didn’t on the TV. But follow the link above and you get to VBK Ltd. This is an Israeli company, and I don’t remember them saying that on the TV either.
Just thought I’d tell you. What with assassinations, European Unions, train crashes (another one here in Blighty on Friday), and all the usual politically administered misery, it’s as well to remember that some things in our flawed but fascinating civilisation are being done extraordinarily well, and ever better as the years go by.
