Where To Compute Next?

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web concept: innovative digital surfaces

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There has been quite a bit of development recently with innovative digital surfaces. There is the overly hyped iPhone which promises a new take on the interface of the mobile device. You have Microsoft Surface which excites me more, although the consumer grade application seems years off. But who couldn’t get excited about the idea of sitting in a chic martini lounge and dividing up those complicated bar tabs so easily? Then there is the Sony OLED screen, which just get your brain juices working on all sorts of applications from video ads in magazines to traffic information delivered to your windshield.

The future is moving toward sleek and flat, less buttons and more touch. With more and more information flowing through the air and with the move toward flexible interfacing, the device itself is becoming less and less important. The device is just a receptor of information, and the more flexible the device, the more integrated into daily life it becomes, the more success it will have. The revolution lies in surfaces.

Microsoft is taking the idea of the computing surface as part of the environment to a whole new level. However, the idea certainly isn’t new. When visiting SIGGRAPH last year, I saw computer games played using a powder screen within a sandbox. There are Reactrix screens in the floors of local theaters, and then there is the Fog Screen for your smoky clubs and concert events. How long will it be before there are ads running on our sidewalks, in the skies, on window panes, on the sand at the beach?

I personally think that the Phillip K Dick/Steven Spielberg vision of the future in Minority Report nailed it in many ways: the touch screen flexi-glass computing surfaces, video ads on the city walls and sidewalk, videos ads on the back of cereal boxes, personalized video messages based on previous purchases when you enter stores, electronic newspapers. The film supposedly takes place in the year 2054. It’s amazing how a film like that put some technologies so far into the future (flying cars, retina ID-ing robo-spiders), yet other things are only a few years down the road from where we are now. I wonder what other Phillip Dick predictions are in our near future.

suggested pairings

• Minority Report Becomes Reality
• Two articles from ClickZ: Interactive Ads Play Big Role in “Minority Report” and Does ‘Minority Report’ Portray a Scary Future?

technorati tags: Minority Report, Microsoft Surface, SIGGRAPH