The Future of Screen Technology

Erik Kain

Erik writes about video games at Forbes and politics at Mother Jones. He's the contributor of The League though he hasn't written much here lately. He can be found occasionally composing 140 character cultural analysis on Twitter.

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16 Responses

  1. We’re still going to be TYPING in 2014?!?!? FAIL!Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Tony Comstock says:

      Oh God, I hope so.

      I’m so much better with a backspace than without one.Report

    • ThatPirateGuy in reply to Tony Comstock says:

      Unless you want to hook electrodes to your brain which you then let an internet connected device read typing is going to be king.Report

      • Jaybird in reply to ThatPirateGuy says:

        Who would want that?

        Instead of a post that says “while I certainly can understand how you reached the conclusion you did given your premises, I don’t share this one fundamental premise… and without that one premise, the chain of logic leads here rather than there”, you’ll get a post that says “HITLER HITLER HITLER HITLER HOOTERS HITLER HITLER”.

        Or maybe I’m projecting.Report

        • ThatPirateGuy in reply to Jaybird says:

          First things first, I love your comment here. It is delightful.

          Second, an explanation of my own prior comment.

          I. Anything that replaces the keyboard must be easier to use.
          II. Voice will never be that even assuming a perfect system to capture what you say it is just quicker and easier to type.
          III. touch screen are much clunkier to type on.
          IV. direct neural interface that worked would be easier and faster. Anything else would use hands or voice and thus either be a keyboard or suck.
          V. No device that doesn’t connect to the internet will be something people want to create text on in 2014

          VI. My conclusion that “Unless you want to hook electrodes to your brain which you then let an internet connected device read typing is going to be king.”Report

        • E.C. Gach in reply to Jaybird says:

          “II. Voice will never be that even assuming a perfect system to capture what you say it is just quicker and easier to type.”

          I think only because of being raised in a certain context. If school spent even half as much time on speaking as writing, we’d all be much better at it. Like writing so much that your first drafts become much better, speaking/dictating a lot would lead to better formation of first thoughts.

          I heard tell that Twain dictated his autobiography.

          I think we’re just a writing/typing centric people. So in that case, yea, typing probably isn’t going anywhere. But I could imagine a Socrates or Plato much preferring to speak then write/type.Report

  2. Pat Cahalan says:

    You saw Minority Report? The technical consultants for that film are working on their own graphical platform (http://oblong.com/).Report

  3. E.C. Gach says:

    I can’t imagine having to compete on a regular basis with half the world for someone’s attention at any given time. It’s bad enough when you meet up with friends for a movie or at the bar, and someone wips out their mobile device to browse the web.

    How many years until normal everyday human interactions start to model online social ones ( minus 3?)?

    As fun as the technology looks, I’m still waiting to see how it will be incorporated into and shape our everyday lives. Will 2100 be the year of iBorg or a return to a somewhat more relaxed lifestyle as new technologies allow us to slow our lives down rather than speed them up?Report

  4. This all so very cool.Report

  5. I do hope that when this great technology comes, it does not make me suffer the same muscle atrophy and wan skin tone of these young Swedish men.Report

  6. Mark F. says:

    “I do hope that when this great technology comes, it does not make me suffer the same muscle atrophy and wan skin tone of these young Swedish men.”

    The young bearded guy is pretty hot IMHO. And all Swedes have pale skin–they hardly see the sun for half the year!Report

  7. RTod says:

    A sidebar note on the new life discovered by NASA, apropos of nothing:

    A friend sent me a link to a story about this titled “Scientists Discover Life Form Based on Arsenic.” In the very second paragraph, it said “This discovery has reminded man of a Star Trek episode, where the Enterprise discovers a creature called the Horta, which a silicon-based life form.” My reaction when I read this second paragraph: How shameful have the mainstream media’s science writers become, that they tie some new amazing discovery to a freaking Star Trek episode?

    Shameful confession:

    When I first read the headline, my first thought was actually, “Oh, that’s just like that Star Trek episode where they discover the Horta”Report

  8. The technology they demonstrated is not far off. My concern 9as some of the other commentors mentioned) is the intrusiveness of it all. It seems we’re fast approaching a point of over-saturation of technology into our minute-to-minute lives.Report