"Give me the world," Mark Lucente called out to a wall-size screen projected in front of him. He spread his long arms to define a circle, and a large blue globe materialised, spinning on the screen. The trade-show crowd drew closerâ€"a guy controlling a computer with gestures. "Make it this big," the lanky inventor said to the wall, moving his hands closer together, and the world got smaller. The crowd gasped.
The public got its first hard look at Mark Lucenteâ€"and the things that preoccupy himâ€"three years ago in the IBM booth at computer trade show Comdex. At the time, the 30-something MIT-trained researcher was exploring new ways for people to interact with computers, and many still talk about the demonstration he gaveâ€"part David Copperfield, part high-tech soothsayerâ€"in the crowded Las Vegas Convention Center.
Lucente, now 36, has spent his career inventing technology like thisâ€"natural interfaces to computer data that might someday be the way we all control machines. His work at IBM making computers responsive to body movements was a milestone on the road to seamless human-machine relations. Someday, indeed, the break throughs Lucente has pioneered might help seismologists model oil fields without touching a keyboard or online shoppers inspect merchandise that isn't really there. Nothing would make him happier.
But for an ambitious young inventor, the promise of someday is a carrot. After a while, the meat and potatoes of now start to look tasty too.
Now means e-commerce, which Lucente hopes to revolutionise with user-friendly tools. So in a Silicon Valley loft space, as chief technology officer of startup Soliloquy, Lucente is building tools that let Web merchants bring their products to shoppers on more human terms. We're not talking about video holograms and gesture-based interactionâ€"not yetâ€"but we're talking about tools that can bolster companies' bottom lines today.
The first of Lucente's tools is something called Notebook Expert, which lets visitors at a Web site type a phrase like "Find me the lightest laptop that plays DVDs," and receive a list, plucked from a product database, of lightweight, movie-playing computers. It sounds like a simple natural language database query, but it's much more. Lucente's computer expert has a dialogue with the user, assembling what resembles a human understanding of what the shopper really wants. It might be just an explanation of how much RAM you need for playing games. Or it might be a very accurate and insightful product recommendation, and an easy way to buy the notebook you want.
I am interested in talking with people who want to explore the possibilities of developing the concept of an "Online brain" for application to online teaching/learning programs.