Douglas Engelbart died this week. But his most iconic idea lives on.

The venerable computer mouse, originally prototyped as a pine box with three buttons and metal wheels, was dreamed up by Englebart fifty years ago.

The mouse has been upgraded and re-envisioned — for example, they don’t use wheels or even trackballs anymore. Some have scroll wheels on top, or side buttons.

But the basic idea of moving a thing over here (to control a mouse pointer over there) lives on. Entire generations have grown up using this funky contraption.

We now suddenly find ourselves in a world of superior alternatives — multi-touch user interfaces (of which Android is the leading brand), voice control and dictation and others.

Yet habit and inertia keep us using Englebart’s brilliant but now-obsolete invention.

It’s time to bury the mouse.

Rumors about a coming smartwatch from Google were fortified this week when The Wall Street Journal reported that Google was, in fact, working on an Android-powered wristwatch, according to people familiar with the matter.

When the Journal starts talking about matters about which people are familiar, you can assume they’re reporting something more solid than rumor. We can move the Google smartwatch likelihood needle up to 95% at this point.

As a heavy user of Google services, I really want a great, Google-centric smartwatch.

But what would such a watch do?

I have a theory. And if my theory is correct, then we should be able to speculate about what the watch’s actual specifications, functionality and user interface will be.

First, the theory.

People love large and shiny objects. So we can be forgiven for being absolutely blown away by Google’s idea of relaying IP across the skies via giant balloons to remote areas where Internet connectivity would otherwise not exist.

The most jaw-dropping aspect of the Loon project is the fact that the system uses algorithms to convert published windspeed and direction data into navigation using algorithms. (Balloons are moved by finding an altitude at which the air is moving in the right direction.)

So much about this project is dazzling — the scope and audacity of it; the solar-powered servers-in-the-sky; and the fact that balloons will deliver the Internet to remote areas — that the core aspect of Loon is easy to overlook.

The key thing about Loon is mesh networking.

How cool would it be if some big consumer electronics company that is really great at hardware design sold a smartwatch you could buy for under $100 that was open to any developer’s firmware?

That would be amazing, because as an open platform genius software developers could compete with each other to create the ultimate smartwatch experience, and they wouldn’t need to fuss with designing and manufacturing a physical hardware smartwatch.

Well, it’s happened. Sony this week announced an Open SmartWatch project that invites developers to create and flash their own firmware for the Sony SmartWatch.

This is bigger news than it sounds. 

Apple’s WWDC event is happening tomorrow. Because new announcements in the Apple space happen so rarely, and because that company is historically better than average at keeping secrets, everybody’s going to be watching WWDC to see what Apple announces. Above all, people care about Apple announcements because the company is easily the most influential brand in consumer electronics.

That wasn’t always so. Sony used to be the Apple of the consumer electronics market. In fact, Sony was probably Steve Jobs’ biggest inspiration, responsible for not only Jobs’ famous clothing (his turtlenecks were made by the maker of Sony company uniforms) but also the name Apple (Sony used to be called Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation and Jobs was inspired by Sony’s switch to a friendly, happy sounding corporate name).

Shockingly, Sony nowadays loses money on consumer electronics and makes most of its money from selling insurance. The reason Sony loses money is some combination of corporate inefficiency, lack of vision and, most of all, the fact that its products generally aren’t worth the money they charge for them.

In the past couple of decades, Sony has followed a familiar, frustrating pattern: They always enter consumer electronics market late with overpriced but very good hardware hobbled by their own software interfaces and applications nobody wants. They did it with laptops. They did it with netbooks. They did it with smartphones and tablets, too.

So nobody takes Sony seriously anymore. They’re a two-bit, washed-up has-been.

Or are they?