SURFACE COMPUTING

                             SURFACE COMPUTING
I can’t even imagine how things got done before the implementation of touch screens. Running around with little pieces of paper, hoping the cooks can read your handwriting, praying one of those slips doesn’t get lost, calculating people’s bills, and if a group of 6 wants to split the bill…f***! Thanks to touch screen technology, I was able to punch in the drink orders, appetizers, main courses, desserts and coffees for huge groups of people in seconds. Once I pressed “Send,” the information was then printed in the kitchen, the bar and the dessert counter, complete with table and client number, so that not only does everyone know where the items are going, but which client gets what. The bills were calculated automatically, and you could split the price of a pizza 12 ways if you needed to.




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As amazing as this was, this was touch screen technology at its most basic. Things have become a little more exciting since then.



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Moviegoers were extremely impressed in 2002 with the touch screens used to solve future crimes in Minority Report. But in 2006, Jefferson Y. Han, a research scientist at NYU blew people’s brains apart when he transformed the concept into reality. During the annual Technology Entertainment Design conference (TED) in California, Jeff introduced multi-touch interface technology to the world. On a rear projection drafting table equipped with a multi-touch sensor, he demonstrated how users can manipulate what they see on a computer screen using all ten of their fingers at the same time, shifting items around, expanding, compressing, and rotating images, independently of each other or as an entire unit. The main difference between Han’s technology and Spielberg’s sci-fi interpretation is the fact that we still have to physically touch the screen, whereas Tom Cruise wore gloves equipped with sensors, but rest assured, people are working on that.




He went on to found the company Perceptive Pixel which would produce and distribute the technology to sectors like medical imaging, mapping, broadcasting, defense and intelligence. Anyone watching the 2008 presidential elections witnessed the practicality of multi-touch technology as CNN kept viewers up to date using their “Magic Wall.”



in 2008, Microsoft adopted multi-touch technology to transform an ordinary coffee table into a revolutionary super tool. With the incredible popularity of the iPod, iPhone, and the most recent addition to the i family,the iPad, Apple already capitalized on the word “touch” when it came to computer interaction. There were even April fools jokes about an upcoming iTable. But as computer screens are reaching furniture-esque proportions, and the jokes are becoming ever more real, Microsoft was wise to capture the spirit of the latest technological trends by calling their latest baby: Surface.





Multi-touch technology combined with surface computing is radically transforming our relationship with computers. Films like Minority Report, The Matrix: Revolutions and District 9have all included multi touch interfacing in their predictions for the future, a future we are already beginning to experience today. The way business meetings take place, the way doctors perform surgeries, the way pilots fly planes (or the way anyone operates any vehicle for that matter), the way you scope out an exotic destination for your next family trip, all will eventually shift towards a more vivid, more dimensional, more fingertip-friendly experience. Kramer’s going to need to add a new chapter to his book about coffee tables!