interactive ui in minority report
ysnimkimCited 3× on HN, 2010–2024
other · general · evergreen · 2010–2024 on HN
A short compilation of the gesture and multitouch interface scenes from the film Minority Report.
Cited in discussions of sci-fi interfaces and whether ideas like pinch-to-zoom were prior art.
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3 comments from Hacker News
In minority report there's a scene ( ▶ this video ) in a forensic/detective office in which MC swipes data and info on the screen (hologram ?) with their hands. Then at some point another character moves a physical object (data drive ?) from one desk to another and at first I am thinking "yeah, right.. no network to move data from one screen to the other, uh ?". But then I remind myself of this passage from Virtual lights (Gibson): > Was it significant that Skinner shared his dwelling with one who earned her living at the archaic intersection of information and geography? The offices the girl rode between were electronically conterminous-in effect, a single desktop, the map of distances obliterated by the seamless and instantaneous nature of communication. > Yet this very seamlessness, which had rendered physical mail an expensive novelty, might as easily be viewed as porosity, and as such created the need for the service the girl provided. Physically transporting bits of information about a grid that consisted of little else, she provided a degree of absolute security in the fluid universe of data. > With your memo in the girl's bag, you knew precisely where it was; otherwise, your memo was nowhere, perhaps everywhere, in that instant of transit.
Minority Report came out in 2002. It contains pinch-to-zoom. It is obvious. ▶ this video Edit: Another commenter linked to this 2002 video, which is a better example: link
You may be onto something here. I remember reading somewhere that Bond gadgets become true after something like 30 years, however I suspect that this pace of development will be speed up dramatically as time goes on. Some examples off the top of my head: GPS - there's an old Bond movie with a analog 'homing device', weapons on cars, cars that can drive on the road and fly also, 'stealth technology' like in Die Another Day (in development). Getting back to movie inspired OSs, the guy who designed the amazing gesture interface behind those in 'Minority Report' started a company and has prototype UI in development: ▶ this video link