> even further backward with the mechanical keyboard obsession

My impression has been that, along with 3D printing, the mechanical keyboard obsession has has spurred a renaissance of keyboard innovation in the last decade or so.

You can now buy keyboards or kits with ortholinear/columnar keys, split hands, built-in displays, modes/layers, non-QWERTY layouts, Hall effect keys, non-uniform resistance, and more.

I haven't seen this degree of keyboard innovation in a long time. The best part is that they're an order of magnitude cheaper than the wacky keyboards of the 1980s and 1990s, many of which cost thousands of dollars. These days you can try something innovative out for just a few hundred bucks and even less if you're willing to solder it yourself.