A research group from the University of Tokyo has put forth a bold concept for the way we could interact with technology called “Invoked Computing.” It’s seriously outside-of-the-box, in more ways than one: The concept is that we would not learn how to use a technological device, but that device would instead observe us and learn to do what we wanted it to accomplish.
As a rather striking example of an application, Alexis Zerroug from the U. of T.’s Department of Creative Informatics shows how a banana (I swear I’m not making this up) could be used as a cell phone. The idea is that you pick up the banana and put it to your ear, the computer observes what you’re doing and recognizes what you’re trying to accomplish, then hooks up the phone call and projects the audio using parametric speakers so that it sounds like it’s coming out of the banana.
The silliness of the banana aside, this raises the interesting point that a lot of our current technological objects are simply middlemen, go-betweens serving as an occasionally unwieldy bridge between us and a desired result. It reminds me of the design school maxim about how people want toast, not a toaster. Watch it for yourself and see what you think:
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