Minority Report UI: Science fiction to reality

I remember how thrilled I was (and I am pretty sure you all were) when I watched Tom Cruise (in Minority Report) making those Kung Fu moves in the air while navigating through the files in front of the huge transparent display. Watching Tom juggle through those screens was sheer joy and seems some sort of alien technology. Minority Report is one hell of a movie and thanks to the vision of Steven Spielberg and his crew for making such an attempt and giving all of us the peak in the future. Spielberg has always been an egalitarian as far as science fiction is concerned and after ET there was no looking back for him. Time and again it is always fun to watch his master creations. After watching Minority Report I was imagining how long will it take for the human beings to convert this amazing UI (user interface) from science fiction to reality? When will you and I and everybody else, can make those moves in the air and things started to happen on the screen? Lots of such questions came to my mind and some random numbers crossed my brain. May be human beings can achieve and master this sort of technology within 10-15 years may be more. You know what, I was wrong in my calculations very wrong.

Minority Report got released in the year 2002 and I came to know yesterday that if things go as per the plan this sophisticated technology which is being called Spatial Operating Environment (SOE) will be introduced commercially starting Q4 this year, and if you are as excited as I am then we should be thankful to John Underkoffler one of the primary master minds behind this amazing and mesmerizing piece of technology. John who is an MIT veteran and he completed his PhD from MIT and then worked for MIT media lab for almost 15 years. According to John the research for SOE started like 3 decades back in MIT and slowly and gradually it has become what we have all seen in the movie Minority Report.

Spielberg hired John to design the user interface paradigm for the movie and this is how John came to LA and never left. John founded Oblong. This company is now actively working in refining the technology and giving it new meaning so that soon you and I can put our hands on it. g-Speak is the name of SOE’s commercial version due out in Q4 this year and it is currently being used in various high end industries like financials, data mining, aerospace, bioinformatics, geologic explorations, supply chain management and inventory. g-Speak is primarily used to crunch huge data sets containing myriad of information flowing through them. The commercial version will be something which can be helpful for any day to day computing something like sorting music files, photos, presentation and most importantly the ever growing world of gaming.

John along with his team gave this stunning TED talk (in Feb 2010) and the presentation is just jaw dropping. Watch out these videos to see how John and Oblong will change the future of UI. The idea to use the space all around us is just brilliant and the underlying technology is simply grandiose and mind blowing.



This second video is from the site of Oblong (the magic continues...)

g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.

Within the span of 8 years (from the release of Minority Report in 2002 to John’s TED talk in 2010) John and his incredible team has transformed the science fiction into reality and I am sure this is how we all will browse data and shape the the future of computing. Kudos to John and his resolute efforts. Hope we all will become our very own version of Chief John Anderton (the name of the character Tom Cruise played in Minority Report) and will give new meaning to this revolutionary technology. The journey from John Underkoffler to John Anderton has been very amazing and by all means has not ended, not yet.

"We're not finished until all the computers in the world work like this."
- John Underkoffler (…and we all are waiting John we are waiting)