Skinput, a prototype technology, does away with the mouse and replaces it with your arm and hands, turning you into a mobile touch interface.

It works by monitoring acoustic signals on your arm and translating these gestures and taps into input commands.

Non technically, you wear a cuff (much like a blood pressure gauge) on your bicep which picks up your finger tapping on various parts of your arm and hands and interprets them as input signals to activate or inform the device it’s hooked up to.

Turn up or down the volume on your mp3 player, answer the phone, flick through your contacts or emails. or hook it up to a pico projector (miniature stand-alone projectors also being built into mobile phones and devices) and project images onto your forearm to see what’s happening.

The easiest way to get your head around it is to watch this video (you might want to skip past the technical intro and start watching around 1 minute)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3XPUdW9Ryg&feature=player_embedded]

This technology, like emotive headsets that uses your thoughts to interact with your devices, are part of a new vanguard of input technologies that will eventually find their way into main stream use.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDpmSiMiscA]

It will be not be exactly as we see it now, but it will be in subtle ways with inbuilt sensors and devices sewn or woven into our intelligent clothing, or perhaps buttons, brooches or caps that will link seamlessly to our mobile devices to drive and interact with our real and virtual worlds.