Touch Table!

Have you seen Minority Report? If you just answered no, I cannot believe you even exist. Everyone must see Minority Report to understand a single thing I am going to discuss in the entry. If you have not you must immediately stop reading and go to your nearest Blockbuster and rent it. The survival of this blog depends on you, so go watch the movie.

Ok now for everyone who is still here, let’s talk about Tom Cruise’s table. As we know from the plot of the story, Tom Cruise’s character works for a futuristic police department. His division is all based off of preventing crimes from being committed. They receive help from these humanoids called precogs. In the movie you see Tom Cruise take the thoughts of the precogs and look over them to try to figure out where and who the crime is about. He uses a table to mess with the pictures and video but he never touches it. Tom uses a special pair of gloves that let him move stuff without actually physically maneuvering it. This technology is what my blog is about.

Imagine being able to have a computer that was just a table and all you had to do was put a pair of gloves on to do your homework. Well you do not have to imagine it anymore because the technology exists. It is called G-speak. It was created by a company called Oblong Industries, which the founder was actually a film science advisor for Minority Report. The G-speak actually looks quite similar to the table used by Tom Cruise. It can be integrated into almost any surface and allows for multiple people to interact with it. The way to use it is the same in the movie, put on a special pair of gloves. The gloves use similar technology to the Wii system remotes. But instead of pointing a remote you can simply point with your finger and drag things around, open folders, and even play with video clips. The system uses real-world spatial identity and positioning software for the gloves so that the computer can read when you move your hand around.

Oblong Industries has already begun to create a house that has complete G-speak technology. So you could possible go up to your mirror in the morning and have the internet pop up and be checking your emails while brushing your teeth. Then you can grab your emails and drag them down the hallway into your room. Now of course this technology is currently not available to the public just because it is still in development stage but do not worry it will be coming soon.