Minority Report’s User Interface is Now Possible!

Still remember the movie, Minority Report, where visual objects can be manipulated by hand? Jeff Han, a research scientist at NYU’s Courant Institute, has developed a similar interface which responds not only to touch and gestures, but also to varying degrees of pressure. On the demonstration, Jeff flips some photos across the screen, zooms in, throws them away, and calls up new ones.

This is also very similar to the technology in the Apple iPhone.

Check out the video at Fast Company, or watch another version at TED.

I think this is pretty sweet for using Google Earth or sorting through pictures and files. But, before we get all carried away about this being the interface of the future, I question how well it would work for sending an email, writing a document, entering data in a spreadsheet, programming code, or using Photoshop.

via TechFresh