Chapter 1. Introducing Interactive Gestures
"One of the things our grandchildren will find quaintest about us is that we distinguish the digital from the real."
A man wearing special gloves stands in front of a large, translucent screen. He waves his hand in front of it, and objects on the screenmove. It's as though he's conducting an orchestra or is some sort of high-techsorcerer's apprentice, making objects fly about with just a sweep of his arm. He makes another gesture, and a video begins to play. With both hands, he stretches the video to a larger size, filling more of the screen. It's like magic.
Another place, another time: a different man stands in front of an audience. He's running his fingers over a table-size touchscreen before him as though he is a keyboard player in a rock band, his fingers rapidly manipulating images on the screen by dragging them around. He's making lines appear on-screen with his fingers and turning them into silky, ink-like paintings. He's playing, really—showing off. He drags his fingers across the surface and leaves a trail of bubbles. It's also like magic.
The first man doesn't really exist, although you'd probably recognize the actor playing him: Tom Cruise. The scene is from the movie Minority Report (2002), and it gave the general public its first look at a computer that responds to gestures instead of to speech, a keyboard, or a mouse. It was an impressive feat of visual effects, ...