Minority Report Interface is Here: g-Speak
I’m a huge fan of Phillip K. Dick and really thought that the adaptation of Minority Report to the big screen was an excellent movie. Tom Cruise starred in it, but many people remember the technology depicted in the movie more than the story itself, or so it seems when talking to friends.
The retina scanning, computer vision, highly targeted ads and sounds, jetpacks, sick-sticks, mag-lev track vehicles and of course the beautiful larger than life gestural interface that they used for piecing together the clues and crimescenes were great science fiction technology. Useful, seemingly unattainable and of course super sexy! Remember this:
Well, that style of computing is a little bit closer to reality now, thanks to Oblong’s g-Speak. Take a look and prepare to be jealous of these guys:
g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.
When will something like this be in your home? Well, it might be a while. But tradeshows/exhibits could get this very soon, it seems, judging by the overall completeness of the design. Beyond that, large scale systems, like logistics, medical imaging or perhaps spatial/environmental design would probably benefit most from easy visualization/manipulation as seen in g-Speak. There is a little more information at engadget on this, and I found a pretty useful bit of information at Manual Override.
It’s a brave new world! Let’s just hope we don’t get pre-crime departments along with this. 
Posted on November 16, 2008
snax Nov 16
thank gawd! I needs this shit like now.
Brian Nov 17
g-Speak is a pretty awesome interface, but I think it will still be a number of years before you start seeing (this particular) system in tradeshows or even within the direct access of regular people. The system is enormously expensive and there are only a handful of actual implementations of g-Speak in the world. g-Speak beats the rest because of its amazing accuracy, but that is also what makes it so expensive.
Less accurate gestural interfaces such as this will probably start becoming as common as the giant multi-touch screens that have become the latest gadget for news anchors to show off, within the next 2-5 years.
Chad Nov 17
Brian, Thanks for dropping by… Points taken. Having worked with GestureTek’s gestural input hardware in the past and been frustrated by it’s idiosyncrasies and relatively poor performance, the overall accuracy and smoothness of g-Speak is what impressed me here.
That said, while g-Speak might be what ultimately makes it into the next big tradeshow kiosk, it could very well be something similar… fun times, indeed!
Are you playing with anything like this out at MIT right now?
Do tell!
Brett A. Noe Nov 18
I can see some very practical applications for teaching environments. Pretty cool stuff!