Another effort is under way at Xerox, where researchers have designed a desk that reads over your shoulder, using cameras on the ceiling. The system can be used to automatically transfer documents to the Net and organize them. A high-resolution camera, he speculates, could watch all documents moving across his desk, read what it could of their visible text, and remember where each one eventually lands. In a flash, a laser on the ceiling would point to the right spot in the right pile. An abundance of cheap computing power and human imagination are fueling an explosion in new digital species.
Nobody can say.
But somewhere in this evolutionary stew may lie the perfect information appliance. The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.