 We've been interacting with technology by way of our hands and fingers for decades now. First there was the keyboard, then the mouse, then the touch screen. But they all took advantage of our evolutionary ability to manipulate objects with our digits. You see a thing, you touch it, and something changes. By now it's second nature, but with touch screens we added a whole new language. Suddenly it wasn't just tapping and clicking, there was also pinching, zooming, three finger slides, but we're still just basically tapping on glass. So what comes after the glass? One idea is to take touch out of the equation entirely. This is the Google Glass approach. Just drop the information in front of their faces and let them talk, or in case of emergency, tap a sidebar. People are trying to bring this same technology to contact, so you wouldn't even need to wear a headset, but so far it's only at a resolution of one pixel per contact. Big screens like the ones in Minority Report look fun. Waving your arms to move big graphics around. They have a lot of problems, too. We do a lot of interacting with computers, and big gestures get tiring fast. But maybe those gestures don't need to be so flamboyant. Maybe smaller movements can work. Gesture tracking tech can detect a hand in midair and tell which part is the finger and which part is the palm, so when you spin your hand around it can spin the graphic around to match it. It still lacks feedback, but maybe that comes next. Something like a nano-coding that vibrates to fake the feedback of what you're not really touching, or neural trickery that makes it feel like something's really in your hand. The thing is, we've always been really good with our hands. When you hold something, whether it's a hammer or a joystick, it gives you a lot of information. We can feel resistance and weight, and make really precise finger movements to give directions that would be impossible otherwise. That's how we separated ourselves evolutionarily. We were the species with the right fingers to use tools. As we got smarter about how we interact with computers, we'll get better and better at honing in on those strengths. It's one reason why the interfaces of tomorrow might look an awful lot like the past.
 We've been interacting with technology by way of our hands and fingers for decades now.
 First there was the keyboard, then the mouse, then the touch screen. But they all took advantage
 of our evolutionary ability to manipulate objects with our digits. You see a thing,
 you touch it, and something changes. By now it's second nature, but with touch screens
 we added a whole new language. Suddenly it wasn't just tapping and clicking, there was
 also pinching, zooming, three finger slides, but we're still just basically tapping on
 glass. So what comes after the glass? One idea is to take touch out of the equation
 entirely. This is the Google Glass approach. Just drop the information in front of their
 faces and let them talk, or in case of emergency, tap a sidebar. People are trying to bring
 this same technology to contact, so you wouldn't even need to wear a headset, but so far it's
 only at a resolution of one pixel per contact. Big screens like the ones in Minority Report
 look fun. Waving your arms to move big graphics around. They have a lot of problems, too.
 We do a lot of interacting with computers, and big gestures get tiring fast. But maybe
 those gestures don't need to be so flamboyant. Maybe smaller movements can work. Gesture
 tracking tech can detect a hand in midair and tell which part is the finger and which
 part is the palm, so when you spin your hand around it can spin the graphic around to match
 it. It still lacks feedback, but maybe that comes next. Something like a nano-coding that
 vibrates to fake the feedback of what you're not really touching, or neural trickery that
 makes it feel like something's really in your hand. The thing is, we've always been really
 good with our hands. When you hold something, whether it's a hammer or a joystick, it gives
 you a lot of information. We can feel resistance and weight, and make really precise finger
 movements to give directions that would be impossible otherwise. That's how we separated
 ourselves evolutionarily. We were the species with the right fingers to use tools. As we
 got smarter about how we interact with computers, we'll get better and better at honing in on
 those strengths. It's one reason why the interfaces of tomorrow might look an awful lot like the
 past.