This subtle shift at Microsoft comes after 10 or 15 years of work on trying to enhance the user interface for computers. That work has included handwriting, gesture, voice and touch interaction, but largely used in the context of the existing graphical user interface.

About a year ago that work shifted a bit, in anticipation of technology improvements that would allow researchers to begin to apply these different ways of interacting with computers in a new way, beyond simply replacing the keyboard and the mouse.