Here beginneth the write-up of the various panels from SXSWi 09!

The first panel I attended kicked the conference off in style, with an inspirational exploration of the future of ubiquitious computing & immersive interfaces from Ben Rigby, Barrett Fox and Jeroen Lapre in Minority Report Is Real.

Despite the fact that the scene where Tom Cruise manipulates files in a 3d projection using LED gloves lasts for less than 5 minutes, it was so powerful that ‘Minority Report’ has become shorthand for any kind of immersive and gestural computer interface. The focus for the panel was how film has influenced science in the sphere of futuristic / next-gen interfaces, and vice versa:

Being able to touch, move, and magically discover information has been the long-time fodder of sci-fi movies.

With few technical limitations, Hollywood artists have created wonderfully immersive sci-fi computer interfaces. They leave us on the edge of our seats, wanting to experience the magic in real life. Throughout the past few decades, little by little, many of these fanciful productions become real.

Science fiction sets the popular expectation, creating not only anticipation, but a sort of pre-familiarity with new interface paradigms…We expect to control them with gestures, for them to surround us with useful and accessible information, and above all, for them to be beautiful.

In this panel, we’ll explore the convergence of fields that, finally in 2008, made this interface paradigm possible. Hollywood artists provided inspiration. Information visualization experts provided one-off examples showing stunning visuals mixed with useful data. And in 2008, massive reductions in Internet infrastructure costs and data-availability made it possible to create systematic and generalized interfaces that are, at once, beautiful and also useful. Along with the engineers and artists who make these interfaces, we’ll journey through the creative process, limitations, opportunities, and the adventure that awaits in the next several years

The leading conclusion was that the predominant WIMP computer interface ( window, icon, menu, pointing device) will unquestionably evolve – and that this evolution will be signficiantly sharper and more dramatic than the journey from a command line to a windows-based UI.

Key trends in the future of user interfaces:

 

The Holo Projector

As envisioned in film: Iron Man

 

As seen in real life: CNN’s crazy holographic election night coverage

 

 

Data overlay & augmented reality

Augmented reality is something we’re gradually becoming more and more familiar with: the key point about AR vs the virtual reality we used to envisage as The Future, is that whereas virtual reality excludes us from real life, augmented reality allows us to overlay data onto our real lives, bringing together the digital and analogue worlds.

As envisioned in film: Microsoft’s Vision of 2019:

 

As seen in real life: Pattie Maes’ Sixth Sense projector at TED – a wearable device with a projector that paves the way for profound interaction with our environment. Look at a roll of toilet paper in the supermarket and see instantly the data that surrounds it – is it made in an eco-friendly fashion – does its parent company employ child labour? Meet someone? Display their CV next to them – or your CRM records:

 

 

Surround holography

As envisioned in film: The Matrix 3 ship docking sequence, or its best known incarnation, the Star Trek Holodeck:

 

As seen in real life: CAVE holodeck: A Cave Automatic Virtual Environment (better known by the recursive acronym CAVE) is an immersive virtual reality environment where projectors are directed to three, four, five or six of the walls of a room-sized cube. The name is also a reference to the allegory of the Cave in Plato’s Republic where a philosopher contemplates perception, reality and illusion:

 

 

Gesture & Tangibility

As envisioned in film: Minority Report (duh) and Quantum of Solace:

 

As seen in real life: Microsoft Surface – I had a play with this at SXSW, it was pretty cool, although the below video make it look like little more than a giant iPod touch:

 

The Oblong g-speak spatial operating system (from John Underkoffler, one of the technical advisors for Minority Report film) combines “gestural i/o, recombinant networking, and real-world pixels,” to deliver what the creators call “the first major step in [a] computer interface since 1984:

g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.

 

Or for a home-brewed version, try this hack by Johnny Lee: using an LED array and some reflective tape, you can use the infrared camera in the Wii remote to track objects, like your fingers, in 2D space – letting you interact with your computer simply by waving your hands in the air:

 

 

Natural Language

As envisioned in film: HAL

As seen in real life: we’re not there yet! The dream of being able to ask our computers to do things for us using simple voice commands, a la Star Trek, hasn’t yet been realised in any non-clunky way. Although the semantic web may have some of the answers, as the Wolfram Knowledge Engine promises to do some of this:

Wolfram Alpha actually computes the answers to a wide range of questions — like questions that have factual answers such as “What is the location of Timbuktu?” or “How many protons are in a hydrogen atom?,” “What was the average rainfall in Boston last year?,” “What is the 307th digit of Pi?,” “where is the ISS?” or “When was GOOG worth more than $300?”

 

 

Media Cloud

As envisioned in film: The Matrix weapons loading sequence (no pix / clip available) – using 3D space to navigate selections of objects or data

As seen in real life: At present only 3d visualisations within the 2d constraints of your desktop, but nevertheless pretty damn cool: Cooliris lets you surf the web in 3d – in a more cinematic, visual way:

 

See also: Viewzi, Photosynth and Zoomarama

 

True to the subject matter, the panellists eschewed the linear nature of powerpoint for presentation stimulus, and instead used an interactive mindmap to take us through their exploration of the future of interactive interfaces (click below for the full picture):

This whistlestop overview of the journey through the near and distant future doesn’t do justice to the panel at all, but hopefully gives you a flavour of the innovation just around the corner – check out the panellists’ dedicated website Minority Report Is Real for more info and inspiration.