The future is in your hands

One thing I’ve learnt in the gadget game is to avoid predicting the ‘next big thing’; 99.9% of the time I’m completely wrong. The next big thing usually comes out of left field and is completely unexpected. And my predications are not just wrong, they are woefully off target.

So I’m really heading into uncharted territory by predicting that a video I have just seen about a product developed in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab’s new Fluid Interfaces Group is, in my firm belief, the biggest of all next big things.

I believe this is the core technology that will change everything about the way we interface with technology and the way the internet is integrated into everything we do.

So, before you read on, you must visit ted.com/index.php/talks/pattie_maes_demos_the_sixth_sense.html.

Pattie Maes heads the Fluid Interfaces Group at MIT and six months ago set her students an assignment to create a new digital ‘sixth sense’ for humans.

In the tactile world, we use our five senses to take in information about our environment and respond to it, says Maes. However, a lot of the information that helps us understand and respond to the world now comes from computers and the internet. Maes’s goal was to harness computers to feed us information in an organic fashion, like our existing senses.

The prototype, which doesn’t have a name yet, was built from an ordinary webcam and a battery-powered projector, with an attached mirror – all connected to an internet-enabled mobile smartphone. It costs less than US$350 and allows the user to project information from the phone onto any surface – walls, the body of another person or even your hand.

Maes explains that the genius behind the device is Pranav Mistry. In the video, Mistry wears the device on a lanyard around his neck and uses hand gestures to interact with it.

These interactions can be as simple as using his fingers and thumbs to create a picture frame that tells the camera to snap a photo. “If you need to know what time it is, it’s as simple as drawing a small circle, emulating a watch, on your arm,” says Maes.

Demonstrating, Mistry uses his right finger to draw a circle on his left wrist. The face of a watch pops up. Use your imagination here, because MIT’s ‘sixth sense’ device essentially changes everything about the interface. I’m sitting here writing this using a QWERTY keyboard and a mouse. The keyboard hasn’t changed much since the Sholes & Glidden Type Writer was released in 1874, and the mouse was invented in 1964.

It’s so last century! MIT’s device is controlled by simple hand gestures and can transform any surface into a touchscreen for computing. It blows everything else I’ve seen, including Microsoft’s Surface Computing prototypes, completely out of the water.

Although the device is still in the research phase, it provides a sneak peek into the future of gadgets. The MIT crew hopes the device will ultimately be able to provide data access on any object a user comes in contact with.

For Nett readers who use any form of computing, ‘sixth sense’ will unquestionably change the way your business is communicated, transacted and accessed. I’m going to come right out and say it: this is most definitely the next big thing.

'Gadget Guy' Peter Blasina is a small business owner and technology reporter on Seven's Sunrise.