We've all seen them on TV, they cost over 10 thousand dollars, and they're very cool. The Microsoft Surface allows a user to use natural hand gestures to interact with application software.

It operates vertically and horizontally, although probably not under water or in deep space.

Microsoft has more to say about it here: http://www.microsoft.com/surface/

Tune in any cable TV news channel and watch them make use of the Microsoft Surface technology. They use their finger to draw highlights, zoom in on a map, rearrange images, and pretty much anything else a traditional mouse can do. It's very user friendly since there's no need to twitch the mouse in order to visually locate the mouse pointer, then zig zag the pointer to a tiny region of the screen. Wherever your finger lands becomes the location of the mouse pointer. The entire screen behaves as a touch-pad.