[Weekend Open Forum] It seems every year a corporate bigwig predicts the death of some mainstream consumer technology. While most visions are dramatized, there's an obvious trend underway: people are spending more time with mobile devices and less time with traditional desktop PCs. While we'd love to delve into the past, present and future of computing, it's really outside the scope of our Weekend Open Forum. Instead, we'd like to draw your attention to a small fragment of computing evolution: user input. More specifically, touch input.
Industry leaders including Microsoft and Apple believe touch will play a pivotal role in the way we interact with tomorrow's computing devices – and it already does. Touchscreens exist in seemingly every electronics segment, including cell phones, notebooks, and even printers. Touch is available on consumer desktops, but it's still a niche market. Will that change? Are touchscreens only practical on slate devices or will the technology oust keyboards and mice to become the primary mode of interacting with PCs? Discuss.