Technology can be defined many ways. We can say it makes our life easier, or that it makes us lazy. We can say it makes things known, or that it makes us forget what we already know. One thing is for sure, it makes things automatic, but also makes us forget the manual way. For example, automobiles used to come “standard” with a manual transmission and a stick shift, but now most cars are automatic, and most people do not know how to operate a manual transmission. So, technology has its impact in both positive and negative ways.

This article highlights an innovative mouse that not only acts as a two-dimensional pointing device, but also scans your documents and pictures, formatting them into a word document. You have probably never really given much thought to that dutiful servant that lies faithfully on the desk in front of you, ever ready for your pointing and clicking needs. Well, things are changing for this most humble of computer peripherals. Yes, the mouse is now the focus of a high-tech makeover by the clever folk at LG, who have identified its potential for other uses.

With electronics becoming more and more compact, the mouse had largely been allowed to shrink inside yet stay the same size on the outside. This has meant that there has been a lot of fresh air left within the device, or, as LG sees it, “a space for evolution.” Therefore, they created a scanner so small that it could fit into that tiny mouse and their LSM-100 was born.

LG recently announced that the LSM-100 ($51 at Amazon.com) will not just be a top quality mouse with all the usual functions, but it will also be a highly practical hand held scanning device too. It will have the capability to scan up to A3 size paper (11.7 in. X 16.5 in) that can be saved in various formats. It will also have Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology that will be able to convert scanned text into Microsoft Word documents for editing. Brookstone, Iriscan, Vupoint, Worksmart, Halo and Zcan also offer scanner mouses available at Amazon.com.

It’s too early to tell, but if the scanner mouse becomes popular, we may see the day when no one remembers how to use the standard desk top scanner.