Communications of the ACM
Why Minority Report Was Spot On
20th Century Fox
The launch of Microsoft's new Kinect games system, which allows players to run, jump, punch and shoot without having to wear strange clothing or hold any kind of controller, has got technology and cinema buffs alike thinking of Tom Cruise again. Specifically, the moment in the film Minority Report when Cruise, playing police chief John Anderton, tries to figure out film footage and computer data by waving his hands around in mid-air to manipulate it: turning it, shrinking it, pushing it aside, revolving it. Give it time: in a few years, we'll more than likely be controlling our computers in a similar way.
When Minority Report came out in the summer of 2002--the iPod was less than a year old and the iPhone and iPad weren't even gleams in Steve Jobs's glinting eyes--its technological visions of the future seemed mind-bogglingly cool. The film was set in 2054 (Philip K Dick's short story, on which it is based, isn't so specific), so director Steven Spielberg presumably reckoned he was giving it plenty of room for the array of cutting-edge technologies to become part of our daily life.
From The Guardian
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