From Donald Melanson’s Endgadget interview with Bill Buxton, Microsoft’s Principal Researcher, a discussion of NUI (Natural User Interfaces), such as Surface-like devices:

“Are there areas that you think could benefit from natural user interfaces that haven’t yet?

I would say that we have just scratched the surface in this regard. We live in the physical world, and for a long time there was no digital world. Today we have some connections between the two worlds, but when we can truly blend them together, we get something completely new, something we are only now beginning to understand. This is why this is the most exciting time in my career since the first time I used a computer 41 years ago. Compared to what we have done in the past, what we can do today is fantastic. Compared to where we have the potential to be in 10-20 years, we still have a lot of work to do. We still work with computers. But reflecting what I said above, that is just a stepping stone to getting to the point where we are unaware that we are dealing with computers. As the saying goes, people don’t want a hammer or nail, nor even a hole in the wall. They want their picture hanging on the wall at the spot where they want it. That is the high order task. Every time you encounter an issue dealing with some intermediate step or tool in doing some higher order activity, that may well be an opportunity for a more natural, or appropriate means of accomplishing it.

In the future, neither the physical world nor the digital world will be sufficient by itself. The ability to translate your real-world experience metaphorically into the things that you want to do in the virtual world is key.”

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Microsoft Office Labs vision, 2019, featuring natural user interfaces: