Operating a computer with a flick of the hand will become a reality in the next few years- so says Professor Chris Bishop, the chief research scientist at Microsoft in Cambridge. It's an astonishing thought that if cars had improved at the same rate in 1900 as the computer, it would be possible to drive round the world 200 times on a single litre of petrol. And what's equally remarkable is that Moore's law ( which states that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit board will double every two years) has held true for well-nigh forty years. Nor, one feels, will 2009 be an exception.