Presenter: Dr. David Thornburg, Thornburg Center

Dr. Thornburg looked into his crystal ball and discussed things that he believes will be commonplace in the next 10 years:

User interfaces flexible – they can and will change. For example, the One Laptop Per Child program from MIT uses a new type of interface, called Sugar, which was designed specifically for children using educational theory.

Androids – The Fed Ex Institute of Technology in Memphis is building very human-like andoids that can understand natural language and respond. Dr. Thornburg described an experience he had visiting with an android version of author Philip K. Dick, who died in 1982. He said that after 5 minutes it seemed as if he was talking to the author himself. Based on this experience, Thornburg predicts that in the future schools will have access to androids of Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr, or other historical figures. These androids would be able to give lectures and talk with students.

Cisco is developing a product called TelePresence, which uses hi-def video and audio to put people in various places virtually. Watch the video below to see this in action. You won’t believe it!

Researchers at MIT have developed I/O Brush, a paintbrush program that lets you pick up colors and patterns from real life on a brush and paint with them. Here’s a video that shows how it works. Pretty cool.iSkia is a new hardware interface developed by iMatte that goes between your computer and projector and can do several things. It can createa shadow on a presenter standing in front of a projected image, so that the image is not projected on the person. It also allows the presenter to draw on screen with a finger or hand, manipulate projected images on software and move them around. It was invented by the person who invented the green screen that is commonly used in television news for weather. Watch the video to see a demonstration.

Heliodisplay is a way of projecting a computer image in mid-air with no screen and shows images in 3D. Click here to see video and images of heliodisplay at work.

Jeff Han from NYU presented a new multi-touch interface at the TED Conference in Feb. 2006. Many people believe that this technology may be the end of the point and click mouse interface. See his demo here. One of the important comments that Jeff makes is that there is no longer any reason to be confined by the computer’s interface. He believes that the interface should conform to us.

Johnny Lee from Carnegie Mellon has also created a multi-touch system more affordably by using a Wii remote and a pen with an LED light on the end. See the video below:

Some overall trends Dr. Thornburg predicts are technology users using gestures, not a mouse and the user interface morphing into something more compatible with users’ needs.