Can't Touch This

Han began coding software to demonstrate some of the touch screen's capabilities, running them on a standard Microsoft Windows operating system. Meanwhile, Philip Davidson, an NYU PhD candidate, got excited about the project and quickly became its lead software developer.

The first thing the pair did was to modify NASA World Wind, a free Google Earth--type open-source mapping program. (Han figured the military would be keen on anything that works faster, since split seconds mean the difference between life and death.) Then they created the photo manipulator, which lets you upload pictures from Flickr or anywhere else on the Web (it can also make 2-D images appear as 3-D). A taxonomy tool makes it a cinch to navigate the illustrated branches of the Linnean classification system, from animals and plants down to every known species, and see on one screen how these families are structured and interrelated. (They are thinking of extending it to genealogy and an analysis of social networks.) Multidimensional graphing and charting help you visualize spreadsheet data and move them around from one point in time to another, while Shape Sketching lets you draw on-screen as easily as you can with a pencil on paper--then animate these shapes instantly. Down the road, it may be possible to draw Bart Simpson on-screen and instruct the computer in what you want him to do.

"As computers have become more powerful, computer graphics have advanced to the point where it's possible to create photo-realistic images," Han says. "The bottleneck wasn't, How do we make pixels prettier? It was, How do we engage with them more?"

Today's computers assume you are Napoleon, with your left hand tucked into your suit," says Bill Buxton, whom Han considers to be the father of the multitouch screen. "But a lot of things are better performed with two hands. Multiple- sensor touch screens bridge the gap between the physical and virtual world."

Mind you, this doesn't mean touch screens will completely replace the computer mouse, QWERTY keyboard, or traditional graphic user interface (or GUI) any more than cinema made live theater disappear or television supplanted radio. Each continues to do what it does best. Your iPod or cell phone may be fine for short music videos, but you probably wouldn't want to watch a two-hour movie on it. "These media fall into their appropriate niche and are displaced in areas where they are not the best," Buxton says.

Han really doesn't know how his mapping software, photo manipulator, or any of it will ultimately be used--these applications are really proofs of concept, not ends in themselves. "When unexpected uses emerge that no one ever thought of, that's when it gets exciting and takes off," says Don Norman, a professor at Northwestern University and author of Emotional Design. Thomas Edison, after all, believed the phonograph would lead to the paperless office; businessmen would record letters and send the waxed discs in the post. And the Internet wasn't exactly invented to serve the masses and become the backbone to business and commerce.

In January, Han was set to ship his first screen to a branch of the military. He hasn't taken a dime of venture capital, so his company is already in the black.

Meanwhile, wherever touch-screen technology leads, Han will face stiff competition. Microsoft has been working on its own version, TouchLight, which offers echoes of the Spielberg sci-fi flick Minority Report. GE Healthcare, which manufactures MRI machines, is using TouchLight, licensed from Eon Reality, for 3-D imaging: Surgeons can swipe their hands across the screen and interact with an MRI of a brain, peel away sections, and look inside for tumors (retail price: $50,675).

Mitsubishi is targeting a completely different market with its DiamondTouch table, a collaborative tool for business that allows a group of people to interact at the same time via touch screen. Canada-based Smart Technologies has created a nice niche selling interactive whiteboards to universities, corporations, and even to three branches of the U.S. military for briefings. Panasonic has been developing wall-size touch-screen displays, as has consulting firm Accenture, whose interactive billboards are already enticing passengers at O'Hare and JFK airports. Apple has filed for several patents in the field, and there are rumors, which the company won't confirm, of course, that it will soon offer a touch-screen iPod.