For a long time, we were all about touch. Interaction came from contact, and it was a contact we craved. Levers became buttons, which became screens. But all in all, it didn’t take long for touchscreen interfaces to become old-hat. The idea of having to actually be in contact with your device was just silly. How could people expect to have their hands free all the time for tapping and pinching and swiping?
Optical interface was the next logical step. No need to touch it, just look at it. Your eyes were quicker than your hands, after all.
But you can’t expect people to be looking at their screens all the time. That just got in the way of other things. Optical interface was old technology anyway.
Neural interface. Think at it. That was the next logical step. Thoughts were faster than hands, faster than eyes, and they could be in a dozen places at once. Especially these days. Who knew how to focus on just one thing anymore?
We could have stopped there. But when have we ever looked at something and said “That’s good enough. No more inventions need to be made.” Of course, if we had ever thought like that, we would never have got here. Then again, if we had ever thought like that, we would never have got here.
Because how do you move on from neural interface, and a personal device you can just think at? Simple. You make it think at you.
It wasn’t long before think at you became think for you.
They don’t like us going outside anymore. The more walls you have around you, the easier it is for them to stay inside your head. Nature is bad. There are no neural pathways for manipulating in trees. Which is why I don’t know how I got out among them. But my head is clear for the first time in forever, and I’m surrounded by bark and leaves. Perhaps the world of tactile wasn’t so bad after all.
I walk up to a tree, and for the first time in a generation, I touch.
FlashFictionMonth day 10!
Wordcount: 353
No prompt for today, just an idea I had bouncing around for a while.
C. A. Harland 