Here are a few varied media selections that may have some relevance to Prosper Street's unique keycap technology. Things are changing all over the world and in the PC world too. We think it's time for the keyboard to change, and, perhaps even more importantly, for people to change how they think about keyboards. Especially the people who sell them. Read on.

"Todd Schreiner, a Chicago business consultant, went to his local Best Buy recently to check out hot new PC's that could replace his three-year-old computer. He decided not to buy.

Mr. Schreiner represents an unpleasant new reality for the personal computer industry. For decades it has relied on the certainty that customers have an unquenchable desire for speedier new machines. But computers have reached a point where for the most common home purposes - Web surfing, e-mail and word processing - they are already more than fast enough to suit a typical home user's needs.

"I couldn't conceive of a situation with my software applications today where I need a computer with a 2.4 gigahertz Pentium processor," Mr. Schreiner said, referring to one of Intel's fastest new chips. So he decided to make do with his three-year-old Dell PC, with a Pentium III chip only one-fifth as fast, and instead spent his money on more memory, a new digital camera and a CD-ROM burner to store his photos.

More than any other time in its 27-year history, the personal computer industry has found itself in a quandary, having to concoct new reasons to persuade the world's 500 million PC owners to replace their existing machines..." © The New York Times Company "PC Makers Hit Speed Bumps; Being Faster May Not Matter"

"In this column a few weeks ago, I wrote about the futility of trying to predict the future of technology. I focused on the limits of miniaturization: After a certain point, computers will never be any smaller, because we still need a screen and some way to input information...

I will, however, bravely stick my neck out to say this: speech recognition will never replace the keyboard. Never - no matter how sophisticated software gets...

I'm guessing that keyboards will always be with us. Still, watch this space in 2030. If I'm proven wrong, I'll be the first to celebrate." © The New York Times Company "Speech Recognition Follies"

"In general, few people are less interested in predicting the future of technology than I am. The high-tech business is inherently unpredictable - almost random. Just as nobody in 1980 could have seen Microsoft or the Internet coming, so nobody can imagine whatever huge development is being hatched in a garage somewhere at this very moment. Whatever any pundit tells you about technology even five years from now should be taken with a grain of salt the size of Canada. In fact, the whole exercise should be considered slightly less scientific than the horoscope column at the back of a teen fashion magazine.

I figured that maybe I could at least make the talk entertaining - by extrapolating current tech trends 10 or 20 years into the future. You know: In 1985, the standard allotment of RAM in a computer was 128 kilobytes; by 2000, it was 128 megabytes; at that rate, by 2015, it ought to be 128 gigabytes.

But a funny thing happened when I tried to apply the same logic to hardware: I realized that in several respects, no further extrapolation is possible. Because of the limitations of the human body, designers are already up against the wall." © The New York Times Company "Are Gadgets Already Too Small?"

"It is studies like this one that arm those who say there is no relationship at all between computer-related tasks and the various aches and pains that fall under the umbrella of RSI, including tendonitis, back pain, nerve entrapment disorders such as carpal tunnel and radial tunnel syndrome (compression of the radial nerve), epicondylitis ("tennis elbow") and garden-variety muscle soreness in the neck, shoulders and arms.

"We are loaded with data that says it is a myth," says Dr. Nortin M. Hadler, a rheumatologist and professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill...

Many sharply disagree with his view that there is no association between computer use and injuries.

"The evidence to date is clearly in the opposite direction," says Dr. David Rempel, director of the ergonomics program at the University of California, Berkeley. "The people who understand the literature have a general agreement that musculoskeletal disorders are related to computer use."

Dr. Jeffrey N. Katz, a rheumatologist and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston, agrees.

"There's good evidence that the risk is modest - two-fold - but there is an elevated risk," Katz says. "And so many people are at risk [because many use computers and do so for extended periods] that it's probably resulting in a fair amount of symptoms and disability."

Both Rempel and Katz were among members of a committee convened by the Institute of Medicine, a research arm of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences, to review the available studies on work-related injuries. A final report released by the group in January concluded that musculoskeletal disorders, including those associated with computer use, are an important national health problem that results in about 1 million people taking time off from work each year." © MSNBC "RSI Revisited; Controversy over Computer's Role"