Gesture Theology

We saw a glimpse of it in Minority Report in 2002. Now the future is closer. Soon we’ll be managing text and graphics with a wave of our fingers; no need for keyboard and mouse.

Keyboard and mouse — phooey!

When using a computer, who really wants them?

For quantum coolness, we’d rather just point to the monitor with our hand and have the on-screen data obey our desires!

That’s how it was in the 2002 sci-fi flick Minority Report. There’s a scene where the main character, a police officer played by Tom Cruise, stands before a huge computer screen, sifting through crime reports, moving data from one column on the screen to another and deleting still other information. He does this using neither a keyboard nor a mouse, but with his gloved hands. He does not even touch the screen. Instead, he merely gestures and some electronics in the gloves direct the information on the monitor to obey his commands.

The movie is set in the year 2054, but there’s a reasonable likelihood that long before that year rolls around, all computer users will have that methodology available to them. It’s called “gesture technology,” and there...