Yes, you can actually use them if you're capable of building your own controller. I rigged up something which allows me to connect mine to a modern PC, but it's no where near any sort of commercial product. I took a different commercial product I had built, which is rather expensive and large, made some connections between it and the terminal base unit and custom programmed the microcontrollers inside my box to interpret the signals. About as far from being an elegant solution as you can get, but I just wanted to see if it could be done. One of these days I might make it into a practical form-factor, but I think one or two others are working on making a controller for beam spring boards as well, and given my lack of time to work on it, they'll likely beat me to it.
I agree that they're not the most aesthetically pleasing boards, but they're certainly way better than the Displaywriter beam spring boards. I think those were some of the ugliest keyboards IBM produced.
Regardless though, all beam spring boards and Selectrics are huge heavy monsters, which very few people would want on their desk even if they could interface them to a PC. I personally don't mind, being I love the feel of those old keyboards, but if one were to ever interest more than a select few in using something like that, it would have to be made into a much smaller/lighter package.
