SEAMLESS RESPONSE TO OUR INFORMATION NEEDS
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Remember the user interface in Minority Report? Tom Cruise standing in front of a clear screen and, with super cool hand gestures, getting access to all the information he needs to solve a crime-to-be?
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwVBzx0LMNQ
Mauricio Palomar, one of the students in my Technology & Innovation Management course forwarded MIT Professor Pattie Mae and Ph.D. Candidate Pranav Mistry's TED presentation "Unveiling the 'Sixth Sense,' game-changing wearable tech."
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU5wmfyeNs8
What would it be like to have a sixth sense -- a sense of relevant information in a ubiquitous way? As Prof. Mae notes in the talk, yes, we can stop after meeting someone one and do a quick Google search on our cell phone, but that is likely to break the flow of the conversation....
How might work be different with this sixth sense? We certainly wouldn't waste as much time on tracking down information.
Immersive performance with data coming to you as needed is not the same as being interrupted by data. Yes, more is being written about brain development and creativity being inhibited by constant "pinging" of social networking tools. Some claim we don't have time for reflection if we are too attuned to the data stream. But I'm thinking of something else: "Data on the fly" (my term creation of the day) is more about staying in the flow of work than having work interrupted.
This is another step toward Immersive Performance. Comments especially appreciated on tools supporting immersive performance. What kind of tools are you using that proactively support your work process? This is more than Microsoft's "Clippy" jumping in with "It looks like you're writing a letter..." I would would get great value out of my library's search system running in the background and knowing the kind of reference I'm looking for. Yes, I can stay more immersed now that I don't have to take an hour break to go to the library and instead can look things up on-line, but it could be better. Retail sites can do it (e.g., Amazon with "Customers with Similar Searches Purchased"), so I'm guessing my library tools will eventually follow. I'm not asking for much, just context-aware search results without me stopping to think of the best search.
The MIT folks are close. What else could they add to their system to provide the greatest value?
And yes, I'm looking forward to fingernail polish in the four colors! (Watch the TED video -- it's well worth it.)
