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The ways we talk to the machines in our lives keep evolving.

I am typing on a keyboard that is pretty similar to the first computer keyboards from the 1970s. The layout of keys is based on much older technology -- the early typewriter. The first mechanical typewriters date from the 1800s. Each letter was on a thin metal arm that connected to the key that the user pressed. If a user typed too fast, the arms could get tangled up and the typist would have to stop and reach into the typewriter and disentangle them.

Today's familiar arrangement of keys comes from those days. It's called a QWERTY keyboard because that is the first sequence of letters on the top row. This arrangement was actually meant to slow typists so they would not tangle the typewriter arms. It's a good example of how hard it can be to change an entrenched idea, even though it has long since outlived its usefulness and now holds us back.

There have been other, more sane keyboard arrangements available that are based on how often letters are used and allow faster typing, but most typists still grow up learning the old QWERTY system and are stuck with it.

There has been much more success getting people to adapt to new telephone technology. When I was a child, phones had rotary dials. Mounted on the front of the phone was a plastic circle with 10 holes around the edge, each large enough to admit a fingertip. Each hole corresponded with a number; you put your finger in and rotated the circle to input the number into the phone. It sounds hopelessly weird and tedious now, but that's why we still speak of "dialing" a phone number, even though now we're pushing numbers on our cellphone keypad or talking to our voice recognition system or tapping on a software keyboard on a screen with a stylus or stroking an iPhone screen with a finger or two.

Although the computer keyboard layout hasn't changed much, there are rumors that the computer mouse might be on the way out. The first computer mouse was made in the 1960s and has evolved from a delicate and expensive instrument into the familiar low-cost input device we use today. Now there are new input devices hitting the market to supplement or eventually replace the mouse.

OCZ Technology is one company marketing a new input device, called the Neural Impulse Actuator. It has a headband that you wear, and it connects to your computer via a box and some cables. It's being marketed as a gaming device, although it also might be useful for people who are physically unable to manipulate a mouse. The NIA is generating a lot of online buzz and a couple of reviews, and it should be available for purchase soon.

According to OCZ's Web site, the NIA can take input from face muscles, eye movement and the brain. The device uses electroencephalography to detect the electrical activity of your brain. This activity can be detected by the headband, which has sensors that touch your forehead (no drilling required). OCZ is not the only company that is claiming to have a "brain-computer interface" device; NeuroSky and Emotiv are two others. All rely on EEG technology; some have additional features such as the ability to detect head movements as information. None is available for the home user, but all claim to be "coming soon."

So, how can you use your brain to control a computer? The electrical activity of the human brain has been known since at least the 1920s. Neurofeedback was popularized in the 1960s. Experiments showed that meditation was associated with brain activity called "alpha waves" and that people could learn to recognize and control the electrical activity of their brains.

Some people are better than others at this, and it isn't easy to teach someone how to do it. The OCZ NIA is planned to ship with software that can show you what the waves produced by your brain's electrical activity actually look like in graph format.

The shape of the brain waves are related to the level of excitement or relaxation of your brain, and the NIA can sense them. You can't simply think "scroll up" and have your computer respond appropriately. You'll have to learn to control your brain activity and then map particular activities to certain commands.

You might learn to relax and generate alpha waves, and then use the software to tell your computer when it detects alpha waves, it should scroll up. It sounds pretty clunky at this stage, but one could foresee a future in which high school classrooms teach neurofeedback techniques rather than touch typing.

Pris Sears grew up in Florida, lives in Blacksburg and works among Virginia Tech's computers.