MinorIT Report
November 12, 2009
There were only two things in the Minority Report I remember; Tom Cruise using his fingers to control his ‘desk top’, and Tom Cruise (kidding).
After I got over Tom, I wondered what technology was. It had balls. That’s right, one day I shall go up to my grand children and say, “In my time, we had to use a mouse with a ball in it.”
Ironically I think they would reply with “What’s a mouse?” Now all school mice are optical, gaming mouses are laser and who knows whether we would need mouse devices in the future? My current desktop (HP TouchSmart) doesn’t necessarily need a mouse, though poking the screen does tend to get tiring and the insensitivity of the screen makes it tedious.
If the future was like the film ‘Minority Report’, I guess apart from the aching arms from all the shifting and pushing of the screen, it would definitely streamline browsing fluency. IPhones, at the moment, respond pretty accurately to the simple flicks (to change from picture to picture), using two fingers to poke one spot before spreading causes a zoom according to the distance between your fingers.
I bet that after all the arm aching, it would change to eye blinking for double clicks, sticking out your tongue to delete stuff and using your pupils to navigate pages.
Speaking of pupils, the whole eye issue in the film, while highly inspired, was pretty gross. An eye transplant in order to get a new identity is pretty harsh (on a side note, if apple comes up with a system like this would it be called i-eye?).
This ultimately eliminates paying the fine when you lose your IC (eye see?), and it makes identity theft “virtually” impossible. If perfectly integrated with all sorts of personal information, your Eye See would be your ezlink card, Cash card, Credit card, IC, PIN, NRIC and Passport.
If the list expands, it could even be your resume, criminal record and purchase records.
Eyes are windows to your soul, and if this is the future, that would virtually be true.
P.S Isn’t it scary that it was so well-received? This is just like horror films. We hate it if everything in the film actually happens to us, yet we’re spellbound when it’s on the screen and touted as Science-Fiction. Just imagine, in a few years, we might actually be living it.
