Loyal readers may remember a post a couple months back about the use of a glove and hand positions to better (and more quickly) communicate with the computer (“Handy I/O”). I hand’t realized this was an active area of research. Jose Luis Hernandez-Rebollar at GWU presented the Accelleglove (pictured left above) at Siggraph last year (MS Doc). In fact, this was the topic of David Sturman’s Ph.D. thesis a decade ago at the MIT Media Lab. It seems the “grab-place-delete” manipulation of objects onscreen depicted in Minority Report was not all that far-fetched. (Motions which, by the way, uncannily resemble those of Neo… er, Keanu… in Johnny Mnemonic.) Can any Dick fans out there tell me if this was the filmmakers or in the original? (Via SiliconValley.com.)
I hear from Aaron Delwiche, who has it on good authority from Anita Shinall that the precrime reports were delivered via punchcard in the short story. None too cinematic, I suppose.
Though it came as no surprise to me that Gibson is not really very geeky, preferring a typewriter until very recently. Part of the reason I like Stephenson so much is that he is such a neophile as a person, not just writing about a potential future. I think Gibson is a lot like McLuhan in that regard: he is often thought of in a futuristic frame but is really fairly conservative in terms of the technology he is comfortable with.
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When I saw Minority Report, I groaned at his data glove and thought “How 1990!” ;)
I hear from Aaron Delwiche, who has it on good authority from Anita Shinall that the precrime reports were delivered via punchcard in the short story. None too cinematic, I suppose.
Punchcards would have been so much nicer!
Dick was never much into playing with new technologies, as far as I can tell from what I have read. Unlike Gibson with his waldos and implants.
Though it came as no surprise to me that Gibson is not really very geeky, preferring a typewriter until very recently. Part of the reason I like Stephenson so much is that he is such a neophile as a person, not just writing about a potential future. I think Gibson is a lot like McLuhan in that regard: he is often thought of in a futuristic frame but is really fairly conservative in terms of the technology he is comfortable with.