Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

One of the dreams I woke up from this morning had to do with being a college freshman, getting set up at a school I didn't recognize. There was something really interesting about that dream -- or at least something that seemed terribly fascinating about it when I woke up -- but two wake-ups later I'd forgotten what that was.

But another dream, the start and middle even less remembered, at least ended on a memorable note. Someone was demonstrating a full-touch user interface, an extension of those "data tables" or whatever they're called, where you have a ginormous touch screen and it recognises two-hand gestures to stretch a window or rotate an image, etc. The one in the dream was wrapped around stuff, so there'd be a tabletop, yes, but next to it there'd be a globe that communicated touch information to the computer like the table did, and for some reason one of the building's support columns had a touch-display wrapped around it, and there were various computer integrated household objects in the demo as well (though I don't recall what the purpose of wrapping the interface around them was).

Thing is, in the dream I looked at this system, thought about how much power there was in the interface design, then thought of things I'd like to be able to do with it that required more than two hands, and started insisting to the designer that to make it truly useful it would have to be able to distinguish between tongue touches and finger touches so the user could program it to mave licking the screen be a different command than stroking it.

A moment later I was trying to reclaim the thread of thought that had led to that decision, having been distracted by the designer's incredulous reaction, then I was trying to reconstruct it rationally, and after that I was awake.

No, I don't remember what data-manipulation task I'd been imagining when I said it needed to be lickable, but I do remember the visceral satisfaction of the idea of a user-interface that I could really sink my teeth into, eventually use my whole body to direct the computer and the data moving through it.

Awake-reasoning leads me to the conclusion that full-body data-wrestling and grabbing virtual objects with my teeth or licking them might be better implemented using VR than touch-screen technology.