Every once in a while, technology lovers get a glimpse into the future.
The opportunities present themselves quietly. The brilliance isn't always obvious to everyone at first, but some can see that changes are coming. Years later, everyone takes the amazing advance for granted.
For some people, it was the introduction of a screen and an input device we know as a mouse. Others might say it was the desktop computer that Steve Jobs introduced that could talk, do spreadsheets, word processing, and graphics. VR goggles. Search engines. Open source. There are different moments for each of us.
For me, one of those moments was when I first saw a web page displayed by something called a browser. I was familiar with the Internet - the fabulous collection of text from city networks and universities that could be accessed by calling a local phone number and logging on with a 1200 baud modem.
I was also familiar with the history of animation and motion pictures. I knew, for instance, that it only took a century to go from zoetropes to IMAX presentations. This means, in general, that any time you see a flicker of animation being introduced into a new technology it will likely evolve over time to become a much higher quality experience involving full-motion and sound.
You can see this in the evolution of video games. Pong leads to Space Invaders leads to Final Fantasy XII, and so on.
Back to the early 1990's. A friend called and invited a couple of us to see the graphical internet. He starts his computer and opens something called Mosaic, which he said was a requirement for seeing this new web thing. We groan and wonder how many people are going to want to get extra software just for...
... a web page came up. It was a test page, for people who were just getting into this. It had a background color, some text, and some icons. This wasn't the text-based Internet we knew. This text was in color. It had some formatting - something never before seen. "What are those icons?" Hold on, he says.
A picture came up. We shivered. The proverbial light bulb went off. If they can deliver a single picture this way... someday it would be like an IMAX movie to your home. "Ooooohhhh..."
The kicker came next... it was a tiny, short, grainy quicktime movie of a dolphin jumping in a pool.
"Ahhhhhhhhh....." This was interactive, too. TV's limits immediately began to show.
Fast forward to 2006. I'd like to invite you over to show you something. A new way to handle information.
Jefferson Y. Han at NYU has been working on touchscreens and has found a way to let people use more than one finger. (Did you just perk up, or yawn?)
This can handle multiple users at a time, too.
The name is great: Frustrated Total Internal Reflection. The site says "We introduce a simple technique that enables robust multi-touch sensing at a minimum of engineering effort and expense. It relies on frustrated total internal reflection (FTIR), a technique familiar to the biometrics community where it is used for fingerprint image acquisition. It acquires true touch information at high spatial and temporal resolutions, and is scalable to very large installations."
A demonstration is in order. Take a look at Multi-Touch Interaction Research and be sure to watch the movie.
What would you use it for?
If you have a web camera available to you, take a look at Playdocam.com, too. There are some simple playable demos there that use Shockwave/Flash and standard web cams to create a motion-tracking gaming device that places you into the action. A similar rig at a children's museum I worked at, back around the time of seeing the Web the first time, required a full TV studio with 3 chip pro camera, a dedicated computer with special graphics boards, studio lighting, chromakey capabilities, and probably cost a few hundred thousand to assemble.
These are just early experiments and improvements on existing technology, but they do provide a glimpse into ways in which we can interact with information.