Colin Ray joins us to take about the evolution and potential future of various computer input methods. We also take a deceptively long journey through game controllers (specifically the Steam controller), and debate whether the problem is in hardware or software.

Andrew submits this as the episode description, because he has an unhealthy man crush:

“ENGELBART IS LOVE, ENGELBART IS LIFE. ENGELBART IS GENIUS. ENGELBART IS REMEMBERED FOR AN INPUT DEVICE HE DIDN’T EVEN INVENT. COLIN MADE HIS OWN STREET FIGHTER CONTROLLER DECAL. HOVER GESTURES. TOUCH GESTURES. LINE WOBBLER. ENGELBART. ENGELBART. ENGELBART.”

1. The Mother of all Demos (1968)
2. A brief history of video game controllers
3. Sketchpad (1963)
4. Bret Victor of Worrydream
5. The insane GameCube keyboard controller
6. The Xbox Chatpad (which is stupid)
7. Enhance! Let’s find some snakes.
8. 🙌 S T E A M C O N T R O L L E R 🙌
9. Steam Controller for video editing
10. Imbroglio
11. Andy Baio raised his son through the history of video games
12. A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design
13. 10/GUI
14. Microsoft hand tracking
15. Leap Motion
16. Super-cool hover gestures from Microsoft research (they can’t be totally wrong about everything, after all)