As a counterpart to Simon’s post below on applying modern technology to 16th century information, I thought I would offer Pranav Mistry’s SixthSense Technology [1] described as “a wearable gestural interface that augments the physical world around us with digital information and lets us use natural hand gestures to interact with that information.”
Doesn’t sound like much?
Watch the video of his explanations here [2] from the TED Conferences page. I mean watch it now (a colleague just made me aware of it). It is one of the most breathtaking things I have seen and was completely shocked that I was not aware of this already (nor does it appear to have been discussed on SLAW previously). It seems so unbelievable as to be a hoax (I assume it is not).
Mistry is a Research Assistant at MIT’s Fluid Interfaces Lab.
Rather than flipping through digitized pages of Shakespeare’s original folios on your computer (which is cool enough), imagine doing so walking down the street using a scrap sheet of paper as your screen. Or imagine my typing this blog post using the wall of my local coffee shop as my keyboard. Watch the video and you will see what I mean.