Imagine playing Scrabble or doing math equations with tiles that react to each other and to you. Or using the tiles to compose music. Or create a story.
Siftables were one of the coolest of several new and developing technologies shown at the TED conference last week in Long Beach, Calif.
A Siftable is an interactive computer the size of a cookie; each with a screen and wireless radio. They can play video and sound.
Creator David Merrill, a doctoral computer science student at the MIT Media Lab, said he was inspired by old fashioned blocks and their importance to spatial reasoning and learning.
He and his collaborators have re-imagined the computer interface, by asking what if they could replace the mouse — our “digital finger ” — with a tool that would let us “reach in with both hands and grasp information physically, arranging it the way we wanted.”
As Merrill demonstrated on stage, the Siftables interact with, and react to, each other. Tilt a block one direction to play video, the opposite to rewind it. No clicking or pushing of buttons.
One of Merrill’s most impressive applications is a music sequencing and live performance tool. Blocks are programmed for different functions — tempo, volume, percussion, lead and so on — and you arrange them to make music.
TED has just posted the video of Merrill’s 7-minute talk and demo here (sorry WordPress won’t let me embed it).
TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design), which draws some of the world’s leading scholars, technologists, designers and business leaders, is known for spotting future tech hits. In 2006, for instance, Jeff Han set the crowd whistling and gasping with the first public demo of his mulit-touch, multi-user interface screen. It’s the type that CNN and others used during primary and election night broadcasts to show voting trends, results and other information.
Keep an eye on Merrill and his new company, Taco Lab, which will be working on commercializing his research once he finishes his Ph.D this spring.
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