> We've been using our hands for years-keyboards, trackballs, mice, joysticks, custom wheels for driving games, the nintendo light gun for duck hunt, and so for

> We've been using our hands for years-keyboards, trackballs, mice, joysticks, custom wheels for driving games, the nintendo light gun for duck hunt, and so forth. These are generally quite poor interfaces compared to what is conceivably possible. A precise pressure-sensitive stylus and/or multiple fingers on a responsive high-resolution display are much richer than these: higher bandwidth of a more directly relevant input. But the finger/stylus on screen is strictly 2-dimensional without any haptic feedback. Even such tasks as rotating and moving a computer model of a single 3-dimensional object are extremely cumbersome and unintuitive using mouse, keyboard, joystick, steering wheel, etc. Now imagine using those tools for e.g. controlling a simulated puppet in real time. Pretty much impossible. And yet people control physical puppets with amazing precision and flexibility with some strings and wooden sticks. And that’s just moving an already existing collection of shapes. What if I want to design a new shape, say a newly imagined knot, or a new playground climbing structure, or a chair, or the face of an imagined deep-sea creature. Tools like pipe cleaners, modeling clay, paper & scissors, wooden sticks and a hot glue gun, ... are dramatically richer and more efficient than any of these electronic tools.