Gadgetory

we've been interacting with technology by way of our hands and fingers for decades now first there was the keyboard than a mouse and the touchscreen but they all took advantage of our evolutionary ability to manipulate objects with our digits you see a thing you touch it and something changes right now it's second nature with touchscreens we added a whole new language suddenly it wasn't just tapping and clicking there was also pinching zooming three finger slides but we're still just basically tapping on glass so what comes after the glass one idea is to take touch out of the equation entirely this is the Google glass approach just drop the information in front of their faces and let them talk or in case of emergency tap a sidebar people are trying to bring this same technology to contact so you wouldn't even need to wear a headset but so far it's only at a resolution of one pixel for combat big screens like the ones in Minority Report looked fun waving your arms to move big graphics around they have a lot of problems too we do a lot of interacting with computers and big gestures get tiring fast but maybe those gestures don't need to be so flamboyant maybe smaller movements for work gesture tracking tech can detect a hand in midair and tell which part is the finger and which part is the palm so when you spin your hand around it can spin the graphic around to match it it still lacks feedback but maybe that comes next something like a nano coating that vibrates to fake the feedback to what you're not really touching or neural trickery that makes it feel like something's really in your hand the thing is we've always been really good with our hands when you hold something whether it's a hammer or a joystick it gives you a lot of information we can feel resistance in weight like really precise finger movements to give directions that would be impossible otherwise that's how we separated ourselves evolutionarily we were the species with the right fingers to use tools as we got smarter about how we interact with computers we'll get better and better at honing in on those strengths it's one reason why the interfaces of tomorrow might look an awful lot like the past