Jarvis is incredibly intelligent, or at least seemingly so, and apparently self-aware. He also allows Tony Stark to interact with a staggeringly cool amount of computing power. Now, before this heads off into the territory of a blog on artificial intelligence, which Jarvis most certainly represents, I want to include this short clip from the first Iron Man movie which shows Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) interacting with Jarvis while designing the Iron Man armor.
The interactions of Stark with the holograms are the kind of gesture-based computing that I long for. Interaction that is for all intents and purposes, completely seamless and identical to working with a physical object in the real world. Perhaps it stems from my background as a practicing visual artist, but I always want to "get my hands on" whatever it is that I am working with, maybe it is for this reason that I have always chosen to work with physical mediums like clay, paint, and charcoal, as opposed to creating artwork digitally.
The brief clip above bridges the gap between the gesture systems that currently exist, and the ability to physically manipulate a digital object in a real and naturalistic manner. And while our current technologies are not at this level just yet, there are people who are doing incredibly cool things with more natural and intuitive interfaces for working with computers. It is my hope to shed light on some of these advances and pique your interest in the potential and possibilities for the gesture-based interfaces of the future.
