Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!GROUCH.JPL.NASA.GOV!PJS
From: PJS@GROUCH.JPL.NASA.GOV (Peter Scott)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Input devices for the computer of the future
Message-ID: <890112093223.000003A6171@grouch.JPL.NASA.GOV>
Date: 12 Jan 89 16:32:23 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 57

Okay, time to kick in my $0.02 worth.  Dreaming a little here... I'm not
going as far as human-quality continuous speech recognition because I
believe that that will happen only as a result of radical new technology
using a biological model, but everything here is just an extrapolation
(an *extreme* extrapolation!) of current capabilities.

The computer is portable - about the size of a Walkman.  This is mainly
so you have something big enough to get hold of and not lose, rather
than because it needs to be that big.  It has a slot for insertion of
memory modules (flopticals, maybe), about the size of a poker chip,
again, that *big* mostly so you can read the labels and don't lose them.

The computer's attached by two wires to a pair of glasses and a pair of
gloves.  The glasses are wrap-around (say, parabolic or spherical arc)
LCD-derivative technology that can display an opaque or semi-transparent
image, or be completely transparent when the computer has nothing to
display.  Naturally they are 2k * 2k * 24 bit minimum resolution or
equivalent (color, in case you hadn't guessed).  The gloves contain
pressure sensors and transducers.

Now pick your favorite metaphor; since there is a separate input for
each eye, you have stereo and therefore 3-D; a compass on the glasses
can record changes in head movement to make the metaphor complete.
If you want to type, the computer can supply an image of a display
screen and a keyboard which you `feel' with the gloves (could easily
be an ancient Underwood creating output on an illuminated parchment,
if it's made by the same team that did the Macintosh you can bet there'd
be a choice :-)).  3-D CAD becomes a snap; use one hand to manipulate
objects in 3-D (already available but not coupled with stereoscopy yet)
and the other to change modes (flip scales, gravity on/off, all the sort
of stuff that happens in the menu bar).

How about digitizing?  With a little creative technology, when the
glasses are in transparent mode they can be engineered to record the
HLS value of the light they're transmitting, so all the user needs to
do to digitize an object is to look at it, draw a rough outline with
his/her finger, call an edge-detection routine, do fine cleanup with a
pixel editor.

Oops, guess I forgot the earplugs.  Stereo sound, so that if you `pick up'
an object, and drop it, it can make a noise.  A useful form of positive
feedback.  Can also be used to alert you to the presence of objects out
of view.

Now imagine what kinds of games you can play with this sucker.

(Whole thing runs for 6 months off a `D' cell and costs under $1k :-))

Actually, I've gotten so excited about this thing while writing this I
can hardly wait to get mine.  Now, we put in a cellular antenna for
networking...

Any criticism as to the infeasibility of this machine will be met with 
the standard retort that all things are possible with nanotechnology,
which seems to be a standard assumption until we discover otherwise...

Peter Scott (pjs%grouch@jpl-mil.jpl.nasa.gov)