Let me start off with Pranav Mistry and MIT Media Labs innovation “Sixth Sense”.
In brief, “’SixthSense’ is a wearable gestural interface that augments the physical world around us with digital information and lets us use natural hand gestures to interact with that information.”
There is basically a phone which acts as the processing unit and interface to internet, camera to capture gestures and projector to project the data on any surface of your liking. Just to give an example of what you can do with this take few pictures with your hand and then edit and sort them on the spot without any hassles. Smart gesture recognition algorithms are in the heart of this innovation. I will try to post some comprehensive and usable links to resources on gesture recognition in my next entry.
This work obviously weakens the traditional view of high end technology that it makes us “digital islands” and less human. One interesting observation I came across is would someone have the choice to decide if he really wants this technology. I guess we have reached a point where success in technology is dependent on now the size of the community that supports it. A cellphone is useful only when most of people around you have it.
Prof. Jim Bower is the producer one of the most popular educational websites for children. He has a different view of high end technologies. He thinks about internet as medium which allows us to go back to old form of learning. His views can be extended to technologies similar to or based on internet like the Sixth Sense. These technologies are not making us do things which are incoherent with human behavior. They are helping us not just to go back to the ways we actually do things, but also gain new abilities which are in complete harmony with human nature and surrounding.
