A half-formed idea I haven’t been able to shake, so I may as well share it here. Consider it a part of my “free business ideas” platform/offering:

The metaphor of a “mouse” in computing, right? I used to work with a guy who was ex-Microsoft. An old-school comp-sci guy. He told me something about the metaphor under which the mouse was invented. How a mouse is supposed to stand in for some object which you’re picking up. On screen, your cursor (essentially your empty hand) floats slowly over digital objects. When you find one which interests you, you “click” on it by touching it with your index finger. The right click is supposed to be the equivalent of flipping it over to inspect the bottom of it: almost like you’re a primitive man picking up a rock to inspect for edible bugs underneath it.

And the object itself “looks” like a mouse. It has a little tail connecting it back to your computer. And the cursor sort of moves furtively and slowly across the screen, like a mouse would move.

I’m wondering if it’s a human computer interface metaphor though which is quick to be replaced. Simply on account of the sheer volume of information which most people are currently wading through. Seems like a metaphor of a “bird” or something which can zoom in and out of many distances, holons and perspectives is what’s going to be needed from here on out. A bird can soar where a mouse can only crawl along (or maybe scroll).

I imagine the “bird” interface device to be also very musical. The Nintendo Wii controller is maybe similar in some ways, as it’s a device tethered to you instead of to the computer it’s interacting with, thus freeing you up for full body gestures and physical emotional expression and involvement in a way the feeble mouse could never match. I imagine people in the near future standing in front of their three dimensional free floating projected mediaspace descendant of our current internet, acting as orchestral conductors or band directors, using their bluetooth rings and bracelets to call up and send away bits and clusters of data and recombine keywords like intelligent DNA clusters to go off and find (or make) more like themselves, to be fruitful and multiply. Raw data played like an instrument with the whole body, an expression of the self on the fullest and mostly deeply intense and creative levels.