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When was the last time you watched an anime and saw generals and commanders pin-pointing “holographic” images and interacting with them their hands and gestures, and you wished you could have something like that?

While Microsoft Surface doesn’t produce holographic images, it comes close to letting you interact with your high-tech gizmos through touching the surface of a “table”. I remember reading about this technology sometime back in 2002 about Hitachi having invented a similar one, so I am not sure how Microsoft came to be the pioneer in surface-touch technologies. Whatever it is, I can only sum this in one word : AWE

Microsoft Surface is not for the weak-hearted financially. According to a podcaster, it comes at a whopping USD 20,000!!!!! I don’t see myself affording one anytime soon….However, the application of it in businesses is tremendous. Below is an example :-

Imagine you walk into a restaurant (assuming the price would have been streamlined to be affordable in the future, like all tech gizmos) and you can basically scroll through menus of food using your hand through a beautifully designed interface, and when you like the food, you just push the “button” ORDER. The food order gets sent to the kitchen (assuming the kitchen is hooked up to some IT system, which they do in some restaurants in downunder) and the chef will deliver the food. Assuming the future is so advance that every restaurant owners is open to the idea of doing business with online transactions, you can split bills using your credit/debit cards and then the amount automatically gets allocated to each cards, after which online transaction will occur to communicate with the banks. There are some advantages to this :-

1. Merchants no longer keeps cash in the shop. All are done online. Bad luck for you robbers. Try robbing the soy sauce instead.
2. You can still split bills in restaurant, but this time over the table through beautiful interfaces, not the shuffling of cash everywhere. This also gives you decimal point accuracies in the amount splitted.
3. Less hiring of waiters to take orders. All they do is deliver. This increases order throughput and increases sales turnover. Sales management is entirely managed by the customers.
4. Customers can enter comments on the food seamlssly on the table and management can use it as a feedback to their business.

The future is definitely here!!! Ohhh…what an exciting time to live!!!!!

Tags: future, Microsoft Surface, technology