An Idea from Childhood

I liked Star Trek when I was a little boy and wanted to have one of those chairs that Captain Kirk sat in - maybe you remember it: wide arm-rests that you could put dials and buttons on. Anyway, when I was a little older, in high-school, I worked for the second computer store in the US and assembled a bunch of what would be the first generation of personal computers. I dreamed a lot about seamlessly interacting with a computer - sitting at my captain's chair thinking and having my thoughts conveyed effortlessly to a computer that would understand them. Two ideas attracted me in those days - capacitive sensors and the apparent ability to fire individual neurons. The coolest keyboard I had in those days was a "capacitive sensor-based" keyboard from a SOL-20 from Processor Technology. This was the first keyboard that had a nice feel because the keys were not traditional contact-switches. I dreamed of a keyboard on my captain's chair that was the shape of my palm, one on each arm, with capacitive sensors that would be activated by the gentle pressure of my fingers - that is, the fingers would be the keys and the keyboard would be flat. You see, in those days, I was not a good typist so the idea that typing would be the way I would have to communicate with my computer seemed silly and annoying - I wanted something more sublime. I guess I am still searching for that - as I type on this annoying keyboard.

As a postscript, I never could imagine how to use "neuron firing" without some unpleasant notion involving needles so I kept thinking about it but could never get to a point where there was anything sublime other then the possibility that one could think and directly convey ones thoughts - even if in the crude form of characters - to a computer.