Tongue Input Device

The tongue is an acutely sensitive organ with very fine muscular control. It would be useful to have some kind of tongue-driven input device for a computer.

I imagine some kind of tongue-glove, or alternatively a shaped object for holding in the mouth and manipulating with the tongue. These objects would communicate with the computer via short-wave radio. Force-feedback technology would need to be improved, so that these objects could have varying texture and surface properties to communicate state information to the user. Needless to say, this would free the hands for typing and other activities.

In the same way that the point-and-click desktop metaphor evolved and was accepted as THE way to interact with a computer when using a manually-driven input device, we'll need a new metaphor for interaction that makes sense in terms of oral organisation of information, so that the presentation of documents and controls for manipulation is intuitive. This would be a much more immersive and sensual experience.

The device would need to be designed to take advantage of the extreme sensitivity of the tongue - i.e. tailor the device to the properties of the body part, as opposed to a mouse which turns the miracle of evolution which is the hand into a crude pointing device.

It might be impossible to improve computer security markedly, because the device could create some kind of fingerprint based on chemical analysis of the saliva. This would be used to verify the identity of the user.