Genre: Information/Explanation

We 're 25 , 26 years after the advent of the Macintosh , which was an astoundingly seminal event in the history of human-machine interface , and in computation in general . It fundamentally changed the way that people thought about computation , thought about computers , how they used them and who and how many people were able to use them . It was such a radical change , in fact , that the early Macintosh development team in ' 82 , ' 83 , ' 84 , had to write an entirely new operating system from the ground up . Now , this is an interesting little message , and it 's a lesson that has since , I think , been forgotten or lost or something . And that is , namely , that the OS is the interface . The interface is the OS . It 's like the land and the king ( i . e . Arthur ) they 're inseparable , they are one . And to write a new operating system was not a capricious matter . It was n ' t just a matter of tuning up some graphics routines . There were no graphics routines . There were no mouse drivers . So it was a necessity . But in the quarter century since then , we 've seen all of the fundamental supporting technologies go berserk . So memory capacity and disk capacity have been multiplied by something between 10,000 and a million . Same thing for processor speeds . Networks , we did n't have networks at all at the time of the Macintosh's introduction . And that has become the single most salient aspect of how we live with computers . And , of course , graphics : today $ 84 . 97 at Best Buy buys you more graphics power than you could have gotten for a million bucks from SGI only a decade ago . So we 've got that incredible ramp-up . Then , on the side , we 've got the Web and , increasingly , the cloud , which is fantastic , but also -- in the regard in which an interface is fundamental -- kind of a distraction . So we 've forgotten to invent new interfaces . Certainly we 've seen , in recent years , a lot of change in the regard . And people are starting to wake up about that . So what happens next ? Where do we go from there ? The problem , as we see it , has to do with a single , simple word , " space " or a single , simple phrase , " real world geometry . " Computers and the programming languages that we talk to them in , that we teach them in , are hideously insensate when it comes to space . They do n't understand real world space . It 's a funny thing because the rest of us occupy it quite frequently and quite well . They also do n't understand time , but that 's a matter for a separate talk . So what happens if you start to explain space to them ? One thing you might get is something like the Luminous Room . The Luminous Room is a system in which it 's considered that input and output spaces are co-located . That 's a strangely simple , and yet unexplored idea , right ? When you use a mouse , your hand is down here on the mouse pad . It 's not even on the same plane as what you 're talking about : the pixels are up on the display . So here was a room in which all the walls , floors , ceilings , pets , potted plants , whatever was in there , were capable , not only , of display , but of sensing as well . And that means input and output are in the same space enabling stuff like this . That 's a digital storage in a physical container . The contract is the same as with real word objects in real world containers . Has to come back out , whatever you put in . This little design experiment that was a small office here knew a few other tricks as well . If you presented it with a chess board , it tried to figure out what you might mean by that . And if there was nothing for them to do , the chess pieces eventually got bored and hopped away . The academics who were overseeing this work thought that was too frivolous , so we then built deadly serious applications like this optics prototyping workbench in which a toothpaste cap on a cardboard box becomes a laser . The beam splitters and lenses are represented by physical objects , and the system projects down the laser beam path . So you 've got an interface that has no interface . You operate the world as you operate the real world , which is to say , with your hands . Similarly , a digital wind tunnel with digital wind flowing from right to left . Not that remarkable in a sense ; we did n't invent the mathematics . But if you displayed that on a CRT or flat panel display , it would be meaningless to hold up an arbitrary object , a real world object on it . Here , the real world merges with the simulation . And finally , to pull out all the stops , this is a system called Urp , for urban planners , in which we give architects and urban planners back the models that we confiscated when we insisted that they use CAD systems . And we make the machine meet them half way . Urp projects down digital shadows , as you see here . And if you introduce tools like this inverse clock , then you can control the sun's position in the sky . That 's 8 : 00 AM shadows . They get a little shorter at 9 : 00 AM . There you are , swinging the sun around . Short shadows at noon and so forth . And we built up a series of tools like this . There are inter-shadowing studies that children can operate , even though they do n't know anything about urban planning , to move a building , you simply reach out your hand and you move the building . A material wand makes the building into a sort of Frank Gehry thing that reflects light in all directions . Are you blinding passers by and motorists on the freeways ? A zoning tool connects distant structures , a building and a roadway . Are you going to get sued by the zoning commission ? and so forth . Now , if these ideas seem familiar or perhaps even a little dated , that 's great ; they should seem familiar . This work is 15 years old . This stuff was undertaken at MIT and the Media Lab under the incredible direction of Prof. Hiroshi Ishii , director of the Tangible Media Group . And it was that work that was seen by Alex McDowell , one of the world's legendary production designers . Alex was preparing a little , sort of obscure , indie , arthouse film called " Minority Report " for Steven Spielberg , and invited us to come out from MIT and design the interfaces that would appear in that film . And the great thing about it was that Alex was so dedicated to the idea of verisimilitude , the idea that the putative 2054 that we were painting in the film be believable , that he allowed us to take on that design work as if it were an R & D effort . And the result is sort of gratifyingly perpetual . People still reference those sequences in " Minority Report " when they talk about new UI design . So this led full circle , in a strange way , to build these ideas into what we believe is the necessary future of human machine interface : the Spatial Operating Environment , we call it . So here we have a bunch of stuff , some images . And , using a hand , we can actually exercise six degrees of freedom , six degrees of navigational control . And it 's fun to fly through Mr. Beckett's eye . And you can come back out through the scary orangutan . And that 's all well and good . Let's do something a little more difficult . Here , we have a whole bunch of disparate images . We can fly around them . So navigation is a fundamental issue . You have to be able to navigate in 3D . Much of what we want computers to help us with in the first place is inherently spatial . And the part that is n't spatial can often be spatialized to allow our wetware to make greater sense of it . Now we can distribute this stuff in many different ways . So we can throw it out like that . Let 's reset it . We can organize it this way . And , of course , it 's not just about navigation , but about manipulation as well . So if we do n't like something , or we 're intensely curious about Ernst Haeckel's scientific falsifications , we can pull them out like that . And then if it 's time for analysis , we can pull back a little bit and ask for a different distribution . Let 's just come down a bit and fly around . So that 's a different way to look at stuff . If you 're of a more analytical nature then you might want , actually , to look at this as a color histogram . So now we 've got the stuff color-sorted , angle maps onto color . And now , if we want to select things , 3D , space , the idea that we 're tracking hands in real space becomes really important because we can reach in , not in 2D , not in fake 2D , but in actual 3D . Here are some selection planes . And we 'll perform this Boolean operation because we really love yellow and tapirs on green grass . So , from there to the world of real work . Here 's a logistics system , a small piece of one that we 're currently building . There 're a lot of elements . And one thing that 's very important is to combine traditional tabular data with three-dimensional and geospatial information . So here 's a familiar place . And we 'll bring this back here for a second . Maybe select a little bit of that . And bring out this graph . And we should , now , be able to fly in here and have a closer look . These are logistics elements that are scattered across the United States . One thing that three-dimensional interactions and the general idea of imbuing computation with space affords you is a final destruction of that unfortunate one to one pairing between human beings and computers . That 's the old way ; that 's the old mantra , one machine , one human , one mouse , one screen . Well , that does n ' t really cut it anymore . In the real world , we have people who collaborate ; we have people who have to work together . And we have many different displays . And we might want to look at these various images . We might want to ask for some help . The author of this new pointing device is sitting over there , so I can pull it from here to there . These are unrelated machines , right ? So the computation is space soluble and network soluble . So I 'm going to leave that over there because I have a question for Paul . Paul is the designer of the wand , and maybe its easiest for him to come over here and tell me in person what 's going on . So let me get some of these out of the way . Let 's pull this apart : I 'll go ahead and explode it . Kevin , can you help ? Let me see if I can help us find the circuit board . Mind you , it 's a sort of gratuitous field-stripping exercise , but we do it in the lab all the time . All right . So collaborative work , whether it 's immediately co-located or distant and distinct , is always important . And again , that stuff needs to be undertaken in the context of space . And finally , I 'd like to leave you with a glimpse that takes us back to the world of imagery . This is a system called TAMPER , which is a slightly whimsical look at what the future of editing and media manipulation systems might be . We at Oblong believe that media should be accessible in much more fine-grained form . So we have a large number of movies stuck inside here . And let 's just pick out a few elements . We can zip through them as a possibility . We can grab elements off the front , where upon they reanimate , come to life , and drag them down onto the table here . We 'll go over to Jacques Tati here and grab our blue friend and put him down on the table as well . We may need more than one . And we probably need , well , we probably need a cowboy to be quite honest . ( Laughter ) Yeah , let 's take that one . ( Laughter ) You see , cowboys and French farce people do n't go well together , and the system knows that . Let me leave with one final thought , and that is that one of the greatest English language writers of the last three decades suggested that great art is always a gift . And he was n ' t talking about whether the novel costs 24.95 , or whether you have to spring 70 million bucks to buy the stolen Vermeer ; he was talking about the circumstances of its creation and of its existence . And I think that it 's time that we asked for the same from technology . Technology is capable of expressing and being imbued with a certain generosity , and we need to demand that , in fact . For some of this kind of technology , ground center is a combination of design , which is crucially important . We ca n ' t have advances in technology any longer unless design is integrated from the very start . And , as well , of efficacy , agency . We 're , as human beings , the creatures that create , and we should make sure our machines aid us in that task and are built in that same image . So I will leave you with that . Thank you . ( Applause ) Chris Anderson : So to ask the obvious question -- actually this is from Bill Gates -- when ? ( John Underkoffler : When ? ) CA : When real ? When for us , not just in a lab and on a stage ? Can it be for every man , or is this just for corporations and movie producers ? JU : No , it has to be for every human being . That 's our goal entirely . We wo n ' t have succeeded unless we take that next big step . I mean it 's been 25 years . Can there really be only one interface ? There ca n ' t . CA : But does that mean that , at your desk or in your home , you need projectors , cameras ? You know , how can it work ? JU : No , this stuff will be built into the bezel of every display . It 'll be built into architecture . The gloves go away in a matter of months or years . So this is the inevitability about it . CA : So , in your mind , five years time , someone can buy this as part of a standard computer interface ? JU : I think in five years time when you buy a computer , you 'll get this . CA : Well that 's cool . ( Applause ) The world has a habit of surprising us as to how these things are actually used . What do you think , what in your mind is the first killer app for this ? JU : That 's a good question , and we ask ourselves that every day . At the moment , our early-adopter customers -- and these systems are deployed out in the real world -- do all the big data intensive , data heavy problems with it . So , whether it 's logistics and supply chain management or natural gas and resource extraction , financial services , pharmaceuticals , bioinformatics , those are the topics right now , but that 's not a killer app . And I understand what you 're asking . CA : C ' mon , c ' mon . Martial arts , games . C ' mon . ( Laughter ) John , thank you for making science-fiction real . JU : It 's been a great pleasure . Thank you to you all . ( Applause ) </content