I have slim and flexible fingers. Not given to needless physical activity like working out or climbing mountains, this author has made enough lifestyle choices that have allowed said fingers to remain slender and supple. And I'm hypermobile. These digits are perfect tools for fine artwork and penmanship, the manufacture, assembly and disassembly of electronic or mechanical devices – anything that requires a high degree of precision.

Having remained comfortable with these digits for so long, it was more than a little disconcerting to notice that the first two fingers of my right and left hands no longer looked like they belonged to the same person. Not horribly disfigured or anything, but quite obviously different in appearance and feel. The two digits in question on the right hand are more muscular and firm. Gone was the supple flex, replaced by a somewhat robust rigidity. Could it be the incessant tapping away on the keyboard? Unlikely, since I use both hands and more than just two fingers to type.

It's the two-finger scroll on my Macbook Pro. During the last 3 years, I've used the two-finger scroll for everything from web browsing to Illustrator and Photoshop – it's a marvelous and indispensable tool that, once experienced, one cannot do without.

Fans of Asterix and Obelisk will remember the comic book where the duo participates in the Olympics, only to compete against athletes honed for the express purpose of excelling at one sport [and one sport only]. My condition brings to mind the champion javelin thrower who had one scrawny arm, while the other ballooned with muscle – at this rate, that's where I will be very soon. Has anyone else noticed anything similar?

Reprinted with permission from Think More.

Besides processing power, price and battery life improvements, our preferences for gadgets and the direction of those desires point towards three things: Richer displays, more seamless inputs and smaller packages—the first two being in direct conflict with the last. Looking at where we've been and where we are, I don't think we can keep pursuing these goals without going gadget prosthetic.

Now here's a trip: For the first time, this decade, design choices are being made to limit resolution in screens to show mercy to the human eye. Apple's recent iMac revision increased the desktop monitor's pixels per inch rating to about 110. That's the equivalent of a laptop levels of density, but on a big 27-inch screen, and it was so sharp, it hurt. Any desk jockey can tell you that as displays get sharper, the strain goes up. On mobiles, which are already the most pixel dense of the gadget kingdom, designers are frequently bashing into conflicting goals of fitting lots of pixels onto pocketable devices. Resolution-independent operating systems (that rely on vector-based graphics) are important but if we don't take displays inside the human body, gadgets can't get much smaller—there's no way for them to become as pixel rich as desktops while continuing to get smaller than they already are.

The the idea for hybridized HUDs featuring reality and computed interfaces has been around for ages. Science fiction has already dreamed up what it is we want to see in animations like Ghost in the Shell. But the recent explosion of augmented reality apps—powered by smartphones with directional compasses, internet connections, location awareness, cameras and the power to draw data driven overlays—are simply prototypes for real HUD and in-eye/mind displays. It's not a conceptual problem as much as it is a question of how.

Keyboards and buttons are easier to understand as a limitation, as we type on increasingly baby-finger sized keyboards on smartphones with appendages that look like hot dogs. Keyboards just need to go away. Towards that trend, software keyboards may be error prone but when used by the proficient, the typing is way faster and the devices are way smaller. Further away from traditional keyboards, Microsoft Research's projects point towards gesture and voice commands. I don't see how we could get full work days done that way, though, and there's the rub. There's not even a good concept for controlling a PC to the level we need to without keyboards and pointers now. Mind control is a joke.

In user-interface design, we've always trended towards the invisible. Instead of seams, we want the seamless. Instead of four clicks, any given major task is better with three. Maybe one day, none—the blink of an eye. Funny enough, the only mentally controlled gadgets these days are toys. And usually the low-end QVC valley where high-end tech ends up after dripping down from the peak of military or space program development to gadget fiends, and finally their kids. I would guess the sloppy capabilities of such toys, like the Mindflex Brainwave, make it inappropriate, unsafe and unusable for anything but hovering a ball in mid air.

It's funny looking back at attempts of strap-on computing. We always thought these clunky setups—"wearable" PCs velcro'd to our arms or slung over our backs—were the predecessors to in-body computing. I've long assumed that getting to prosthetic gadgets was an issue of micronization. "When we can fit a computer into the profile of a Bluetooth headset, people will use 'em," we thought. But it's clear to me that it's about the interface; the inputs and outputs.

Gadgets don't have much more room for revolutionary improvement unless we bypass our own natural limitations of fingers meant to peel bananas and eyes designed to spot prey and predators, and get these damn things we love and depend on so much routed directly into our brains.

This week, Gizmodo is exploring the enhanced human future in a segment we call This Cyborg Life. It's about what happens when we treat our body less as a sacred object and more as what it is: Nature's ultimate machine.

[Image from Stuart Moore]

Based on Dezeen's description of it, this little gadget is either a pure annoyance or maybe, depending on your imagination, something more useful:

Fingers by Nik Ramage are an eternally tapping mechanical copy of the artist's own hand. At the flick of a switch the resin cast fingers drum rhythmically, until switched off.

What's next? A foot-tapping gadget? Something to say "Ummm, like...you know..." every few moments? [Dezeen]

The scissors are actually a great-looking design concept, and though it seems you'd get less leverage using two fingers than with the inclusion of a thumb, I'd probably buy a pair to keep on my desk so people think I'm, you know, cultured and stuff. The finger scissors are constructed from a bunch of two-dimensional metal parts, which is pretty cool in itself. Looks like they're just a concept for now, but a very cool little idea. [Yanko Design]

Two students, Zhao Wencai and Li Zhoumu, invented this gesture-based car interaction as a presentation for the third China-International Road Safety Expo. Not only can you pleasure your car to start it, you can shove your middle finger in there onto a fingerprint scanner to read how high your blood alcohol level is. Another possible use is as a security system, so the car wouldn't start unless your finger belonged to one of the registered drivers.

Our prediction? These two students HAVE to be girls, or else they'd be more aware of the gesture they were promoting for this device. [Traffic Technology Today via Wired]