Glass in the future - Corning's Future Vision
Here's a clip that has been doing the rounds lately, it's a future vision short by Corning, who specializes in specialty glass and ceramics.
This is very similar to the Microsoft Future Vision clip I posted about not long ago, and I'm a big fan of these types of videos.
Overall I really enjoyed the video, there are some nice ideas in there but it also brings to mind some thoughts and issues around the use of touch-screens. For one, I'm a firm believer that touch screens are great for some things but not suitable for all applications. The bedroom video screen is a good example of this. The nature of touch-screens is that you have to be in close proximity (touching distance) to the surface in order to interact with it. Perfect for mobile devices, but not so much for something like a TV, where the situation becomes comparable to the old days where you had to get up off your chair to change the channel. Also as cool as touch-screens are, in some cases using a touch-screen just seems tiring and a real workout on the arms, sometimes I think why not just stick to a remote where you can control everything by moving one finger, or put the touch-screen interface on the remote itself.
One last thing I've noticed is how dirty an iPad gets at the end of the day having finger prints all over it, and whether or not this would be a problem. But I guess that's more of a cosmetic thing and I'm sure there's a way to make it so you can't dirty the glass.
The highlight for me is the car sequence with the dashboard interface and the sunroof, midway through.
With all these invisible planes of glass everywhere in the city, what's going to happen to all the birds?