Minority Report-like UI getting awfully close

November 15, 2008 by Dave Haynes

If you pitch in this space, you know all about the conversations you get into about RFID tags and gesture technology and how it’s all looking like that Tom Cruise movie Minority Report.

Well very little of what I have seen out there actually is – except for maybe this …

A company out of … called Oblong Industries has started showing off its new technology, called g-Speak.

Reports Engadget:

One of the science advisors from the Steven Spielberg film — along with a team of other zany visionaries — has created an honest-to-goodness, real-world implementation of the computer systems seen in the movie. Dubbed g-speak, the mind bending OS combines “gestural i/o, recombinant networking, and real-world pixels,” to deliver what the creators call “the first major step in computer [a] interface since 1984.” 

I think the first big thing since the Mac UI is a bit of a reach, but it is pretty cool. The thing goes waaaay beyond the tedious stretching and flicking about of photos that dominates much of the multi-touch and gesture tech demos out there. There is still a pretty big open question about just how useful this is for the average slob. And I don’t really see this, with the gloves and the undoubtedly persnickety gesture recognition, for public screens. 

But it certainly does a far better job of showing what might be possible. It would certainly draw eyeballs.  

g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.