How many of you have seen Iron Man 2? If you haven't, well, it's not a great movie by my standards, decent, but not great. However, the plot and the acting have nothing to do with what I am taking from the movie, though. I want to make the observation that the computer used by Tony Stark in the movie is not a thing of the future, or at least, not the distant future.
In the movie, Stark had various means of interfacing with the computer, but the two foremost were his voice, and his movements. The computer often displayed holograms of those things he was working on, and he manipulated them with his hands. It all had a bit of a 'futuristic' feel to it; but it wasn't.
Voice recognition software has a ways to go before it is as useful as it is portrayed in the movie, but I firmly believe that within ten years, most electronic devices will recognize and respond to even quite complex voice commands. In example of today's voice recognition technology, the Ford SYNC (a feature in many Ford, Lincoln and Mercury vehicles since 2008), has voice activated hands-free calling and voice activated music. You can TELL your phone to call someone from your contact list, and you can browse your music by genre, album, artist, and song title, using simple voice commands. Now of course there are many advances to be made in this technology before it will become a regular mode of interface, but those advances are happening; quickly.
As for interfacing with a system via movements and gestures, look at the Kinect! In case you don't know, the Kinect is a gaming system from XBox, that will ship on November 4th of this year, but unlike all XBox systems before it, this one requires no controller. The Kinect will use a device similar to a webcam to monitor movements made by the user and it is programmed to respond in various ways to a variety of gestures. This technology also has a ways to go before it will be very useful for more than gaming, but it is also moving forward rapidly.
As a side note, the Kinect will also respond to certain voice commands, but I don't think they will be very complex.
Finally, we come to the topic of holograms. This, I know next to nothing about. There have been great advances in the realm of 3D graphics lately, but that's a different thing than holograms. I do remember, however, that during the 2008 election coverage by CNN, that Wolf Blitzer had a reporter appear in studio via hologram. She had to be pretty stationary, and it wasn't at all perfect, but it was quite cool. This (along with research I did into the matter a couple years ago) leads me to believe that the technology is there as well, and it just needs to be advanced. This, I believe, will come more slowly than the others, due to the fact that people are pursuing 3D imaging right now, rather than actual holography, but I do see the use of holograms not too many years down the road. Say about 15 before they're used widely.
Oh, before I finish, I just have to add one more thing. In the movie, the AI seemed almost to have a personality. That will come before too long as well. This technology is still in very early stages, and I'm unsure how quickly it will advance, but it will. Look at chatterbots like the popular Cleverbot (cleverbot.com). True, sometimes it really doesn't make much sense, but at other times it can seem strangely lucid. As I said, needs work. Also, before I leave the topic of the AI, in the movie, it communicated with Stark via speech. This is coming too, we already have it in simple form in devices like GPS units, and it's only a matter of time before it becomes more widely used as an Output interface, and eventually used in conjunction with what comes of the technology now used to make chatterbots.
Anyways, I know that all of these technologies have been used in numerous books and movies for decades, but this time...oh so believable, oh so near.
