Written on 25th of June, 2007
The future's here, and it's about time. Finally we have more natural and more interesting options for interacting with a computer. No, it's not just the 3D desktop that I'm talking about. Three-dimensional interfaces have their place, but the current implementations merely work with the same desktop metaphor (I'm looking at you, Aero). What's more interesting are the interaction scenarios that will arise out of enabler technologies. The Wii tracks its remote (and thus your hand) in three-space, enabling virtual sports that were science fiction (even for robots). Apple's iPhone uses multi-touch to let people use their whole hands instead of one finger (or stylus). Minority Report–style interaction is not only possible, it's cheap to build your own.
Microsoft Surface (also known as the “big-ass table”) is remarkable because of its simplicity of design. It's so... un-Microsoft. I'm sure the branding experts at Redmond were driven crazy: there are no logos, no trademarks, no clues that Microsoft Surface is from the same company that created Windows.
Hardware alone is not enough to enable this change. Software must evolve in tandem. The desktop as you know it is not the only way of interaction. It's been abandoned for Sugar, and it's been abstracted away in Etoile. Richer data types (part of the “semantic desktop”) make working with data faster and more intuitive.
As with the desktop, the new type of GUI includes a melange of real-world metaphors and completely novel interfaces. We will have things that act like physical objects, with mass and inertia. We will have objects that cannot exist in the real world, like objects that live in several places at the same time. People are promoted to first-class citizens (finally!). The notion of what can be stored as data in a computer is changing for the better.
Going lower-level, many GUI APIs implicitly affirm the mental model of the computer being inseparable from the desktop. The requirements for a new type of UI have fomented new APIs and programming languages. Processing is emerging as the new GUI framework to interface between us and the PC. It's Processing that undergirds Jeff Han's amazing demos. This is the confluence of a sea change in software with an evolution in hardware.
Undoubtedly you might be saying "Old news. So-and-so has had this for years." That's right, there have been demos and previews of this stuff for a long time. Sun had their vision of the computer (imagining the PC of 2004 back in 1994), and Apple made two videos of their ideas. What is news is its coming ubiquity. Instead of some researcher in some lab demonstrating this technology, it's being used by real people in the real world. People are going to mod, mash-up, and make their own devices with this technology; because the foundation has been laid.
The notion of what can be stored as data in a computer is changing for the better. 