Widespread multi-touch surface computing by 2020

[Magical Realist]

We all saw the future according to Spielburg in Minority Report. Your box of cereal will talk to you and inform you about your nutritional needs. Ads you walk by on the street will call you out by name and grab your attention like wisecracking carnival barkers. No longer sci fi, this is a preview of the future in as soon as 4 years. Moore's Law dictates downsizing screens to paper thin sheets and transparent panels that require so little power they will be cheap and so mass produced for just about everything. Our cities, our workspaces, and our homes will be merged with an increasingly smarter and more interactive internet, where data, images, and social media will flash around us at our slightest microdetected whim.

"Trend 5 – Surface Computing: The Vision of the Future

Imagine a world where everything is a computing surface: your coffee table, mirror, desk, refrigerator, or windows. It is coming by 2020. It is not easy to envision, but Microsoft has developed a video at http://www.microsoft.com/office/vision/ to demonstrate the power of this trend.

There are many opinions on where the puck is going to be in the future. But what is certain is that the world will witness unprecedented changes and opportunities in the years ahead leading up to 2020 and beyond.

The key question is, Will you be ready?"===http://www.infrastructure-intelligence.c...onsultancy

[C C]

Yep, dystopia at the doorstep. I vaguely recollect a "Best Of The Year" short story collection originally published way back in the mid '50s. Which featured one prophetic, little horror tale about being enslaved to a daily commercial advertising bombardment from various devices and sources throughout the domestic, community, and job environments. Everywhere the characters went either in or outside their homes there were constant audio, visual, olfactory, and tactile emanations involving melodic jingles, product smells, well-groomed holographic shills, and sale pitches about "buy this, buy that". No peace.

[stryder]

Anything involving touching is going to transmit germs, so be prepared to wash you hands as it's guaranteed the last person to touch that surface probably didn't.

It reminds me of two articles:
One in reference to the "Biometrics of a persons personal device from their bacteria makeup being unique". the other in relationship to the number of new "lifeforms" identified in the New York metro system where people have touched surfaces multiple times to create a genetic chimera. (again bacteria)