Nextnik: Attention, futurists! This is a glimpse of your precious future! Wearable Intuitive Interactive Computing

Though, one wonders if futurists, by design, can ever truly be satisfied. One of the main drawbacks of contemporary computers is that they force us to use them in an uncomfortable way. Hunched over our keyboards and neck-craned over our smartphones, we adopt more of a repetitive, robotic existence: the machines force us to interact with them like machines. As computers become so powerful that their specs become irrelevant, it only stands to reason that the next major evolutionary step for computing is to make it environmentally friendly. I don’t mean in the buzzwordy “green” way, but that computing systems integrate seamlessly into our personal environments.

Fortunately a team from MIT’s diligent nerd-hive led by Pattie Maes & Pranav Mistry have developed a remarkably inexpensive wearable device that could be your own little infoslave. It automatically collects and displays information onto literally ANYTHING with which you interact. They admit that the dork-collar prototype is clunky, but they have definitely thrown up the warp signature to attract the attention of the possible. Besides, the first cell phoneswere THREE WHOLE POUNDS, so form isn’t really the point at this stage. The beauty of this idea is its inherent simplicity: it spins existing technologies into an entirely new direction. Naturally, this is from the TED conference, an organization that no doubt had to pay off some early-adopter Internet nerd named “Ted” to get its website.

Thanks to Kevin Pereira and his adept Twittering for pointing me to this techno-pornic brain orgy.