APRIL 3, 2009

Are you projecting?

It sounds like something out of a Philip K. Dick novel: a tiny computer, worn around your neck, that lets you surf the Web from any location and project it onto any surface. But MIT Media Lab’s Sixth Sense machine allows you to do just that.

In this recent talk from the TED Conference, computer scientist Patti Maes demonstrates the gadget, which a grad student assembled from parts that any of us could buy at the local Radio Shack (for a grand total of $350). In addition to turning any wall into a video screen, the machine lets you get information about products just by picking them up, Google whomever it is you’re talking to, and take photographs with a simple snap of your fingers. It’s just like the technology in Minority Report — before long, we’ll all be precogs.

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Patti Maes’s TED talk