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by Andrew McCaskey
Slashdot Review Podcast
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world’s most powerful consumer laser.
If you recall the movie Minority Report, you may remember the interactive display that Tom Cruise used as an interface into the record files of various crimes and pre-crimes in the story.
Today’s video is one of a series of demonstrations from the Natural Interaction.org site at NaturalInteraction.org. There are actually a series of projects in view, tying computer data and display to physical objects such as boxes, clothing hanging in a store, or the metaphor of physically pulling a folder out and distributing its contents on the table.
The first video must have had some DoD funding at some point, rapidly accessing maps and photos, zooming, placing and filing on the virtual surface almost as fast as the hands can wave over the surface.
Commerce is always not far from top of mind. If you go to the site at Natural Interactions, there are advertising and retail examples that are the physical equivalent of links or tagging – as the shopper turns over the sleeve of the jacket, the display shows the variety of buttons that may be ordered. Flip the sleeve back to its proper perspective, and the display reverts back to the colors of fabric or styles.
That brings us to their implementation of the Minority Report wall interface. Not shot in the best of light, but a life sized vertical emulation of the movie illusion. My favorite, though, remains the medium tech desktop metaphor.
It is interesting to speculate if there is something uniquely human about physically distributing objects on two or preferably three dimensional space. You all know individuals who rely on a vertical and horizontal data organization scheme in cubicle or home, and save all the work of representing objects by using the objects themselves. You may observe at least one them daily, perhaps in a mirror.
The ancient Greeks used the mnemonic aid of discussion or rhetoric, mentally stepping through the home from topic to topic with the phrase, “In the first place, I must remind you of ….” , “secondly” , and “now we come to..” .
Back to the future, it seems so much more natural than paths and directories. Even better than icons and folders.
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