Improving on Modern Touch Screens: Wireless Computation
*note- all thoughts and ideas expressed have not intentionally been taken from anyone else, and are completely and totally the author's own absurd conjecture and creation; if anyone does steal this idea and make a lot of money, go ahead, but I want 51% ownership of your company...
User input is continually growing more and more intuitive as the technological revolution continues to grasp mankind. So many of us have seen in films and tv shows where people shoot their hands and fingers all over the place, expertly waving them in certain patterns on top of futuristic looking screens to make images appear and disappear, blow things up, alter other things, and manipulate what they please. So how come this dream hasn’t become a reality yet? We’ve put men on the moon but we can’t come up with this simple yet fascinating touch screen we all ogle over? Well I hope to be the first to change this, and start a trend in new ergonomic, design savvy, and futuristic touch screens that will alter the world forever.
It all started when I read the book “2001: A Space Odyssey” on my way down to North Carolina during the summer. As any well-resourced geek would know, HAL 2000, the space ship’s main computer, eventually goes awhol and seeks to kill it’s crew members, knowing that it could do a much better job. However, the main characters manage to thwart the maniacal computer’s devious plans by shutting down his main central processing. I wondered, “now what will serve to control all of the ships many inputs and make decisions on the matter?”. When you think about it, all a computer does is turn an input signal into the appropriate and wanted output effect, whether it be a mouse movement, the rate of a spinning motor, or the movement of a laser. So now the ship would still be giving inputs, but there was nothing there to decide what to do or take action. My questions were answered in the book when it was explained to the crew members that they could shut down HAL and everything would be ok because there was another HAL on earth that could serve the same function. Now however, the ship would have to beam the input signal all the way to earth for the HAL there to decide what to do, and then the correct decision would have to be sent all the way back the ship where it would create the right output of some sort. This is where the light bulb went off. What if the HAL on earth were just a regular computer tower, and the space ship were a touch screen. The “touch screen” still provided the input, and then the signal would be sent to the cpu and back again, where the appropriate output on the “touch screen” would occur. This way it’s just like a modern day pc, but there are litterally no chords attached. The wireless link from screen to computer is exactly the same as the chord that is currently used to connect the two. However, if it were wireless, this would allow for so much more. You could take the screen wherever you wanted, and it could be almost limitlessly thin and compact.
Today they have touch screen tablet pc’s, but please do not get them confused with what I am suggesting. In this case, granted it is portable, but the cpu is still attached directly to the screen. I’m suggesting this, but just unattached. The main processing unit would be sitting at home, while you could simply pop your screen off its stand and walk down the hallway while flicking away at your programs. Granted, these aren’t the incredible touch screens you see in movies such as The Island, Click, Iron Man, and especially Minority Report, but I’ll get to that. One recent movie in particular really set it off for me; Avatar. At one point in this film, a few scientists are whipping their fingers around looking at charts and data on fancy futuristic touch screens. You’re like, “big deal, I’ve seen cool stuff like this before”, but then he pops the screen off it’s stand and walks away with it while still working on his same project. You have to ask yourself, “how could this be possible?” Well maybe not for everyone, but I did, and this thesis is sort of where I arrived: wireless computing. Is it so far fetched to think that bits and bites of command are being sent across airwaves so you can do as you wish with some fasion of an “input device”, in this case a touch screen? Cell phones already do it all across the globe with this “3G Network” you hear so much about on commercials.
Now I’ll “get to that” like I said I would, about how what I’m saying still doesn’t show how we could have those incredible devices we see. Well, quite frankly, you’d be right. What I’m saying doesn’t tell you how to create one of those touch screens, but what I’m suggesting could easily lead up it. If such devices could become as small and portable as I suggest, people would work furiously to try and make the touch screens themselves more and more intuitive, with new operating systems, programs, inputs, and so much more. So I leave the building of these devices to the pros; when there’s money involved and a promise for expansion, it will happen. I just hope to pave the way with my suggestion towards computation over the air.
We must now discus the importance of size. If you have ever looked at how thin the actual screen in your monitor is, you’d be amazed. Yes, monitors themselves are thick, but that’s because they have to house at least some “brains” inside. What if there were no “brains”, or if the “brains” were just situated elsewhere. This is my proposal. All you would need is the screen, a battery to power it, and something to wirelessly connect it to the main computer. That’s it. As technology progresses, these touch screens would only get less and less bulky, more portable, and better in general.
The one major issue that immediately comes to mind however is that of processing speed. How long would it take for the screen to send input to a computer and for it then to come back again to execute a command? Not only that, but is the wireless technology even in place yet to create a strong and fast enough connection to actually compute through? I don’t know. All I do know is that there would have to be an incredible amount of data continually flowing through the airwaves if your touch screen were to be instantly responsive. I also don’t have a clue whether or not anyone has thought of this whole dealio yet. It seems so simple to just eliminate wires and create the essence of portability, yet it is so profound at the same time. Freedom. You would have absolute freedom. Not only would you have access to intuitive controls at your fingertips like all those actors in the future, but you would be able to take it with you anywhere; eventually all throughout the world.
Yet nothing happens overnight, and I feel a lot of the technology needed to complete something of this magnitude isn’t in existence yet. But that’s what I want to work towards. I said I’d leave building these crazy things up to the professionals, but that’s just it; I want to be one of those pros. My dream is to be on the cutting edge of some technology like this, where my brainchild will eventually sit in everyone’s homes and boost the world’s productivity ten fold. Just like Star Trek led to the idea of a “cell phone”, I feel that many sci –fi movie of today will induce a similar quest, but instead for the perfect touch screen.
