The Magic Wand

We've all seen how successful the Nintendo Wii has been - half the people I know own one. The Wii remote is a like a magic wand with an accelerometer and buttons. But what if you did not need the buttons? What if you could use only in-the-air gestures with the wand to telegraph your intentions? Sounds more like a magic wand from books and movies now doesn't it?

The Magic Wand is exactly what Microsoft is attempting to patent in a resent USPO application that's getting peoples attention (including my own!). But the question I have is this: are in-the-air gestures enough?

I believe that the combination of multitouch and voice commands has enormous potential and this is also true of tangible computing, another subset of Natural User Interfaces. Imagine picking up your own personal wand and pointing to a lamp and saying "On". That would be truly cool. It would be even better if you could program your own key word commands. Luminos!

A friend of mine, Chad LaVigne, remarked once that programming is the closest thing there is to magic. I couldn't agree more. We weave incantations in an obscure language and create something from nothing with a simple gesture (click the "build and run" button). Our books of magic are source code and our magic wand is the humble computer mouse.

What is really cool about Natural User Interfaces is that its puts the magic in the hands of every day people. Isn't the multitouch table like a magic pool? Isn't the Wii remote like a magic wand? We have a long way to go before these devices become "invisible" but I think we are actually entering the first period in human history where magic is becoming a reality not just a fancy.