Other have come along, a lot of which stems directly from the advance of the computers and circuitry into the “daily use” stage. Cell phones, itself a product of wired phones and radio frequency technology, now sport GPS systems courtesy of navigation satellites, which of course is a direct result of advances in space technology. To complete the circle, computers are certainly used to design and implement programs in the space industry.

Unfortunately, I am not one to turn my nose up at a word or trend just because everyone else is saying it. So bear with me while I type out what was going around in my head since I became interested in reading sci-fi and watching flicks like “The Minority Report” – convergence, convergence, Convergence!  It’s always convergence that results in these amazing technologies that the geek in me can drool over. It’s a good thing too that I didn’t stop drooling about convergence because I guess my wishful thinking over the past few years is bearing fruit.

                                       "Now"-tech. It's not for sale thou

Now, there was a lot of technology in “The Minority Report” (TMR from now on). The car was delicious looking but not so advanced convergence-wise, the pre-cognitive ability was a bit too sci-fi for my taste (and seemingly too far-off in the future), but the big touch-screen was right up my alley. It was impressive, gadget-y, clearly useful (never mind that it was a movie), and seemed to me a “not-quite-impossible” kind of technology. In use, it also seemed intuitive and logical (again, not minding that this was a movie).

                                          Tom conducting a virtual symphony

So imagine when quite recently, I saw a working demo first-hand (well, first hand only in the internet sense) of a system that aped the functions and actions of the one in the movie - there was only one thing I could think of saying then – cool. My descriptive ability completely failed me at that point. How much more cliché-ish can you get but to say “cool”? Yet if you’re really a techie, and haven’t seen anything like the demo before, I dare you to say a more appropriate, more succinct word than “cool” when you see it yourself. Visit their site here. I’ll wait and recover while you take a peek.

                                       Hand gesture for taking your own picture

Now that the shock is a bit in the past and I’ve regained some of my editorial faculties, I can try and describe my best guess for the technology that is behind the demo. Going back to our theme of convergence, we can immediately note that big screens are nothing new. Nor are touch screens and the software that powers their functions. Yet the combination of the two here makes such an impact that the resulting product takes on a whole new dimension. More specifically, the software, while still being classed as “software for touch-screens”, has been tweaked and improved to the point that actions are super-intuitive and can probably be picked up in a few minutes by almost anyone. Combined with a big working space in the form of the humongous touch-screen, working will seem more like playing when this thing rolls into stores – hopefully sometime soon. Other than that, maybe the company added some “secret sauce” to make the whole thing seem so appealing – what is it with big screens and new interfaces that make us revert to geekiness so? What do you think?

                                       Big Screen: Defined as a two-person workstation

Of course we are not quite “there” yet. Note that the “screen” in TMR is.. non-existent. Or rather, the “screen” hung suspended in thin air and Tom Cruise’s character simply started manipulating icons and applying pressure against an invisible background. The closest thing to it that I’ve seen is an experimental projector that uses dust particles in the air to show a blurry picture. I may be wrong of course, and if any of our more well-traveled readers (traveled through the internet that is) have seen something closer to the TMR ideal, leave a comment. There’s also the thing about the pre-cognitive system that the technology interfaced with – I found that remotely disturbing, and am glad not to have found any kind of parallel to it in modern times.

One last thing I want to note: The perceptive pixel technology was very similar in another way to the one in TMR: you used two arms, two hands, and all your fingers to manipulate icons. Plus, you do it all while standing up! The technology in this case can use improvement, for both the movie and the perceptive pixel demo. It looks cool, but I guess there’s a limit to the “coolness” you can think up – I don’t see this technology being accepted too widely if you had to do calisthenics along with your work. To be fair thou, it may be a simple matter to tilt the screen just so and notch up the sensitivity of the touch-screen to present to the user a more normal chair-and-workstation setup.

                                            A revolutionary  pointing device - soon to be replaced by fingers

My wishful thinking is all well and good, but I can’t claim all responsibility for producing all these wonderful technologies from my strength of will alone. Perhaps a whole legion of us convergence freaks was there for the movie and continued imagining the tech afterwards, resulting in perceptive pixel. So for the future, help me out and drool with me, fellow geeks, and perhaps some god of technology above will hear our wishful thinking and produce more wonderful products of convergence!

P.S.: There is another, very obvious example of this technology that came out recently. Leave a comment if you know what it is.