Sometimes you see movies that presents a rather cool interpretation of our (possible) future. One of my favorites in that department is Minority Report. I even use examples from that movie in presentations I do for my work because it shows technologies that are just now becoming a reality. For instance in the field of narrowcasting (aka ‘digital signage’) and digital publishing such as E-paper. A friend of mine send me an url to the website of the New York University Media Research Lab where they do all kinds of cutting edge research into new and cool gadgets and future interfaces. The one he send me was for a particular cool new invention in the field of ‘multi-touch interaction’. Anyway: instead of explaining all this to you, you just watch the video I have put up here and you’ll see why this reminded me of Minority Report. In that movie they have a computer that uses ‘multi-touch interaction’ as well (and also int ‘The Island’ come to think of it).
Anyway: check out the video and see for yourself. I can see a lot of applications for it. The video shows cleary that using this kind of interfaces really speed up your interaction with software/machines in general. Especially the part where they manipulate a digital ‘photo-album’ and what seems like a special version of ‘Google Earth’.
Oh WOW.. That’s so cool. I can’t wait for this to hit mainstream. I will make everything so much easier in the world. I’m still waiting for that finger print scanner for buying groceries hit mainstream. Speaking of that, what ever happened to all those AT&T commercials about the future of technology. Renewing your driver’s licence at the ATM, Scanning your whole cart of groceries by just passing through like the airports, and stuff?
I’m from Europe so I haven’t seen those AT&T commercials but I bet they use RFID (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rfid) The problem with it is that there are a lot of privacy issues there with it. It is actually like Big Brother. On the other hand: it might be really handy for sure.