Hands On Computing: How Multi-touch Screens Could Change The Way We Interact With Computers and Each Other

Imagine a large flat screen hanging on a wall. You and your design team are hanging out in front of it. Any one of you, even several people at a time, can move things around, shrink things, whatever . . . by just touching the big flat screen, like those who own iPhone can do now, one at a time. It's heading your way:

[I[n laboratories around the world at the time of the iPhone’s launch, multi-touch screens had vastly outgrown two-finger commands. Engineers have developed much larger screens that respond to 10 fingers at once, even to multiple hands from multiple people.

It is easy to imagine how photographers, graphic designers or architects—professionals who must manipulate lots of visual material and who often work in teams—would welcome this multi-touch computing. Yet the technology is already being applied in more far-flung situations in which anyone without any training can reach out during a brainstorming session and move or mark up objects and plans.