Gadgetory

so think about how we build things it's pretty complicated right involving assembly line of robots or actors to build something that's pretty cool but what if you had one robot and that robot was a screen that's basically what MIT is done with its kinetic blocks project okay so it's not exactly like the screens we use in our phones or TVs it's actually what MIT calls a pin based shaped display which is an array of computerized pins that move in physical space according to spatial data that data is fed in by a Kinect camera hovering above it allowing it to create 3d representations basically what that means is if a Kinect sees a hand it creates a hand in 3d it's pretty cool and MIT already pulled that off a few years back with its inform projects but with kinetic blocks and as he has ratchet up what the display can do to make a capable of building stuff if it's fed the right data it can manipulate blocks rotating them and even stacking them on top of each other things get extra cool when it uses magnetic blocks which leads to even more complex structures so imagine building more complicated things this way what about cars or our phones yeah we're not there yet but MIT is thinking a lot about this with an idea called radical atoms basically what that means is they're envisioning a world where all the data can manipulate it in the physical world it's a long way off but it's a world I'd like to live in