Tom Chatfield is frustrated by the “qwerty phenomenon,” wherein, having found a keyboard “design that largely fitted our early needs, we gave up on alternatives”:
The 27 bones, over 60 muscles and tendons, and three nerves of the human hand are sensitive to minute variations in pressure, velocity, position, temperature and texture. They are effortlessly able to execute three-dimensional manoeuvres while sensing and responding to all of these. Yet, in computing terms, all this incredible bandwidth is usually funnelled into tapping on keys able to recognise only two information states – on and off. Even the most advanced touchscreen is barely able to register five fingers’ worth of contact points on its textureless, depthless surface.
He caught a glimpse of the future when he encountered a new musical instrument, the Seaboard (seen above):
For someone who has played the piano for twenty-five years, the Seaboard was an exquisitely bizarre encounter. A sleek black piano keyboard with a ribbed and rubberized surface, it looked like a silicon mould for making music-themed desserts – and felt, when I was graciously allowed to sit down and play, like massaging a giant bag of jelly sweets. Digging my fingers into the (startlingly robust) keys mixed familiarity with sudden ineptness. Onto the concept of a piano had been grafted several entirely new layers of physical interaction.
What was truly remarkable was the degree of control on offer. According to London-based manufacturers ROLI, the “soft threedimensional surface that enables unprecedented realtime, intuitive control of the fundamental characteristics of sound: pitch, volume, and timbre”.
The Dish 