Through the Looking Glass

It’s only recently when I had a data plan activated on my iPhone that I started seeing the future possibilities of mobile applications and their potential for everyday use. Reading through an interesting list of 10 futuristic user interfaces today, I was particularly taken with Mac Funamizu’s “Looking Glass” concept that utilizes location awareness, a highly capable camera and the ability to discern data from photos taken.

As shown in the example above, the concept device can discern a whole wealth of contextual information about the environment around it and present that to the user in an attractive and appropriate way.

Mac goes on to show how this concept could tell you what’s in the food you’re about to eat, provide instant, on-the-fly translations, and how it could be applied to the iPhone.

This concept is really interesting to me because, really, it’s not too far-fetched. Large screen, high resolution, highly portable, location-aware devices are a reality today. The only thing that makes this particular concept a challenge is the software and its ability to distill information that the device captures into a useful form. In other words, we just need to build the brain.