A can of worms.... opened...
 

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/pa...xth_sense.html

Whooo... uhhh... wait a minute... that means...

This is another step towards the thing I'm always talking about. The demo in the video gets interesting at 4:02 (this device is better than Microsoft Surface because it works on any surface, including just holding out the palm of your own hand to dial a phone number etc.) and again at 5:02 (where they explain, how does this device help you at the grocery store).

But they don't explain how the visual recognition engine works, i.e. how does this thing know who or what it is looking at? That crucial step right there is what has always been needed in order to, for instance, take a digital picture of a plant and upload it to a website that tells you what it is and whether it's poisonous (the thing my dad said they should have when I was talking about the other thing).

Very cool device, and the presenter has the good humor to quip "We'll be back next year with the 6th sense brain implant..."

But. But. I don't want to see dead people.

OMG. If I can have this thing, I'd be willing to forgive them for failing to deliver me a flying car yet.

Can I be the usual meh-sayer? All this stuff falls into a category of neat, but not something people really want.

Do I want to take an imprecise picture by holding my hands in a square? No, I prefer to compose it properly with a viewfinder, and if I care about the image I want to review it immediately, with a small LCD screen.

Phone number on your hand, do not want! I can take the time to pull out the phone to get that one exact. Speech recognition for calling is getting better too. I just want a contact list that doesn't go away when the device needs to be replaced with one from a different company.

Minority report interface, I guess so! But is it better, or just different? I notice that they only demo certain things on white walls, indoor, which I guess we have in abundance at home, not so much in public. Better than a crisp LCD touchscreen? Only in that you don't have to pull it out of your pocket. Otherwise, you have to paint your nails four different colors or walk around with rubber bands on your fingers. What is multiple-finger interface really good for? Enlarging things seems to be the biggest use so far. I guess there will be more innovation on that in future... maybe...

Which toilet paper is most ecological? Don't care, so now you've built an interface for a feature that you wanted, not that I wanted.

Also, privacy? You're sharing your info lookup with everybody around you. You don't want that and neither does everybody around you.

And? If I'm meeting you for the first time, and the first thing you do is Google me on a nearby wall? Or project a word-tag of my blog (which I don't have) on my shirt? Sorry, you're an asshole, so we don't really need to meet. Besides, isn't your mirror-projector going to conflict with my mirror-projector? Sending infinite blasts of information all over the place?

Its just like that episode of Paradox I'm always talking about.

Maybe you didn't notice, this is a proof-of-concept prototype built in three months by a college student with $350 of off-the-shelf parts. It's not a finished product and this is not a marketing video to "sell" you on marketable features.

Nevertheless, on 03-08-2008, you asked Dwellars to consider the following:
Isn't the device they built here exactly the kind of thing that could do that? Didn't you, yourself ask for this device to be developed? Granted, you have to strecth your imagination far enough to imagine that the platform that could rate one type of product on one type of criteria would be capable of the impossible, science-fiction task of :::gasp::: obtaining other types of informtaion about other types of things.

I think UT's request could be more easily satisfied by a smart phone or a netbook.

...that magically hops out of your pocket and takes a picture of the item and looks it up and then gives you the report. Right. We're talking about developing human interfaces, not "what information is available"

I'm not downplaying the possibility of a leap forward in human interface.

But the problems that need to be solved are non-trivial and won't be coming any time soon.

In the mean time, I'd be perfectly satisfied if I could point my phone at the back of the book to scan the bar code which would look up the book at Amazon or Borders.

It's true, but I'm thinking it more likely that my phone can scan the UPC code than this device can flawlessly recognize a book cover. Now they have decided we want the number of stars on the cover, and a little more information on the inside page. That's not what I wanted, I wanted the Amazon reviews. And not just of books, but of everything sold at Amazon. And actually I didn't want just the reviews, I want the related items, the link to see everything by this manufacturer, and the % of people who bought other things after looking at this product page.

dar, there ya go (UPC code scan)

I think the phone manufacturers will work out the details faster than these guys. Like I said, it's cool, butit's not what I really wanted.

Or, that's what they had time to make it do in order to get a 5 minute demo video ready for the TED conference. I'm making the assumption that we're capable of applying a little imagination here (i.e. what features could be programmed into such a device?) and you are proving me wrong. And that is the crux of the technological hurdle here that they haven't explained:

Plus, the toolmaker isn't always the best craftsman. If they can get a foothold with gimmicky stuff, the "killer app" could come out of somewhere else.

This is one I care about. Not ecological traits, but I'd like to know which products have hidden allergens in them. Granted, that assumes that information is out there in an accessible place to begin with, but there are already several services that do this in book format.