Innovation in computing is often inspired by bright ideas in gaming. We immerse our senses

techradar writes:
Gaming technology often drives innovation across all computing fields. When Nintendo spent 22 billion yen (about €163million) on research and development way back in 2005, the fruits of that research produced the Wii, which has sold 27 million units worldwide. But what technology can we expect in the consoles and PCs of tomorrow? Read on to find out more about 3D goggles that place you inside your game, headphones that replicate a surround-sound environment and even gaming networks that try to predict what you're going to do next...

Controllers of the future

If you want an idea of how PC technology will change over the next 10 years, look closely at innovations concerning game controllers. Why? The first point of contact with a PC is always the controller (keyboard, joystick), and if that experience is exceptional, the memory processing power, multi-threaded computing and high-end software will also work better for the end user.

Think of the mouse: it changed every computing paradigm when Douglas Engelbart invented it in 1970. Even data centres have had to go through a radical transformation in the past 20 years as the mouse has become the dominant method of computer control, so much so that – in the next 20 years – a data centre will become like a remote power plant that mouse-wielding network administrators control from afar.....
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Source techradar.

Brain Scanners, Fingercams Take Computer Interfaces Beyond Multitouch

With their easy-to-use touch screens, Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch are driving home the idea that computing can be more than just tapping away at a keyboard and clicking a mouse.

So it's no surprise that multitouch displays (screens that are sensitive to the pressure of more than one finger) are capturing the imaginations of other manufacturers, including Samsung, Palm and Hewlett-Packard.

But multitouch is merely the first step of a coming revolution in the way people interact with computers.

That future may include using neurotransmitters to help translate thoughts into computing actions, face detection combined with eye tracking and speech recognition, and haptics technology that uses the sense of touch to communicate with the user.

"Computing of today is primarily designed for seated individuals doing office work in the developed world," says Scott Klemmer, co-director of the Human Computer Interaction Group at Stanford University. "If you flip any one of those bits -- look at mobile users, or users outside of the developed world or social computing instead of individual computing -- then the future is wide open."

Read more at Wired.