Human-computer interaction has not improved enormously since Mark Twain’s time, when the typewriter was invented. A European research task force hopes to change that by making human-computer interaction, well, ‘similar’ to the way humans do it. Mark Twain famously invested, and then lost, a fortune on the first typewriter, in 1874. Since then, human-computer interaction has moved beyond basic key-entry (here, the mouse is the most pervasive development), but the keyboard’s legacy lives on. We are still using Qwerty, a layout designed to slow down the typist’s speed, because the mechanical keys would jam together if pressed in rapid succession.