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Philip K Dick vision coming to life

∞ Posted at 9:24 pm

I have this thing for Philip K Dick stories. I dunno why. I guess I got hooked on Blade Runner and then started reading other stories of his. Kind of like what happened with Robert E Howard and the Conan stories.

Anyway, for those of you that don’t know, Philip K Dick wrote short stories like “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” which was then turned into the movie Blade Runner, and other stories that later became pretty famous movies such as Total Recall (Schwarzeneger), Paycheck (Affleck) and also Minority Report (some whacko.)

The underlying current through all stories was this disjoint of time. Where often characters in the story would either have huge time periods of their life missing, or would have time periods of their life that didn’t actually happen but were remembered.

For example, in Total Recall, Kimball had his memory altered such that his whole life with his wife and their honeymoon and everything else that remembered was all completely fabricated. But then, the whole story was also completely fabricated and nothing more than a dream.

Or in Blade Runner, there is the suggestion that Deckard could possibly be a Replicant himself.

Or in Paycheck, Jennings has entire months and even years of his life erased from his memory, then finds himself with a life and death jigsaw puzzle trying to put the pieces of his memory back together in order to save the world.

I didn’t really like Minority Report as a movie. It felt too… … clean. If you read the original stories Philip K Dick wrote, they’re always very gritty and almost grimy. As if the future he writes about is more of a teaming mass of people fighting for their square inch of space, and not caring what it takes to get it. You can really see his involvement in the Blade Runner movie. Unfortunately, he died before that movie was finished.

However, what stands out about Minority Report as a movie for every single person is the damn cool displays and interactive computers they used. Hands swiping across translucent screens moving objects on the display in 3D real space and real time. Pulling digital objects apart and moving the pieces to different locations on the screen using your hands as if you were doing it to physical objects. People saw this movie and completely flipped out. Its almost become the golden fleece of computing interfaces and the modern interactive GUI.

You can see the influences of this style of interface in devices like the iPhone and iTouch, or in Microsoft’s Surface displays. Multi touch devices that you can use your hands to interact with. However, they’re still only a 2D environment.

Today I saw something that got me excited. Something that made me stop and go “WOW!” Something that finally gave me hope that, while still years from consumer release, finally suggests that what was expressed as an idea in Minority Report could actually be real.

And I feel like I’m in a mind warp scene from a Philip K Dick story because of it. :-P

Now, unless you have a super powerful computer with memory to burn and more than a few very powerful graphics processors, you probably won’t be running this for a while. That said, dreams are free and this definitely is a great start towards a commercial product that may one day be the way we interact with our computers.

_{Via Fast Company}