Saturday, November 15, 2008

Minority Report Tech Becomes Reality


3 comments:

SuiginChou said...

"Necessity is the mother of invention."

Time and again this saying has not only proven true but proven to be the divide between those inventions which are possible yet impractical (such as this) and those which however impossible are made possible through human ingenuity and because of their practical benefits to mankind.

While this video displays some cool-looking technology, it's nothing that you couldn't accomplish with a mouse and/or keyboard. In fact, I can think of many reasons why I would not like this software in its present form:
1) it requires too much physical exertion. I don't mean this in the "fatty fat lazypants" sense, I mean it in the "instead of carpal tunnel in their 30s, people will be complaining of rotator cuff injuries in their 20s" sense.

2) it requires the use of gloves, which are nothing more than a replacement for the mouse except now they have to annoyingly be worn. (Ask anybody who gets sweaty hands easily whether he'd prefer a PowerGlove to an NES controller!)

3) the practical benefits of what was showcased here are so few. How often do I require the ability to drag something from one computer screen to another? Only the most hardcore of computer nerds have 2+ monitors hooked up to one machine. And again -- a mouse-click can and does do this.


There's another old saying I can quip at these folks, one which NASA is incredibly fond of: "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." I'm sorry, boys, but the computer mouse ain't broken enough to warrant swapping to this all-too-similar concept.

Jay said...

Eh, I still wouldn't mind playing around with it. And then becoming insanely rich and installing it in my basement.

fulleju said...

yes yes, but can this be done while slouched in a comfy chair with one hand elbow-deep in a big bag of doritos?