Wandering electrons... but not too far

Here's something that makes Minority Report seem so 20th century.

I stumbled upon this in an article at Wired.com entitled "Perceptive Pixel’s Multi-Touch Wall Now Available for $100K". They've inserted a YouTube video, but you can see a better quality video at the Perceptive pixel website -->

click here to go directly to it.

As they pointed out in the Wired.com article you can get it today from Neiman Marcus for a coooooool $100,000.

Oh, hold on, STARTING at 100k.

Personally I'll hold off until the price comes down to something reasonable, like, oh, I don't know, 70k

But what do you think? Are interfaces like this the future of Information Technology? One thing you'll notice when watching the video is that there is a type of cyber-keyboard that can be called up, and that's where I start wondering a bit. I mean, whatever we do, the written word is, and will continue to be, the main tool available for going beyond the 1000 words that a picture is worth. Can we come up with a more efficient tool for writing than the keyboard? (If you say, "yeah, a pencil", that's just the proof that you never learned to type correctly.) This is especially so when we're writing something that we intend to share with others using I.T. This type of interface is spectacular to look at, but will it be an efficient working tool? You'll notice that the people manipulating the device spend most of their time pushing, pulling, stretching and squishing pictures. That gives a good show, but is this thing going to be advantageous when I have to get that project off to the client before tomorrow morning?

I'll let you express yourselves, but one thing we can't deny: This is really going to impress the neighbors!