Research labs at universites are a fascinating slice of the new media frontier, where new interactive creatures crawl out all the time.
Among the new-media lab rats I've been watching lately are Siftables, a prototype developed by MIT's New Media Lab. These tiny tiles are designed to offer a new way of physically manipulating digital information.
Siftables resemble Dominoes, only they're computerized and therefore more dynamic. Each contains a mini-computer, radio and display screen, so they can sense other "smart" tiles around them and respond as people move the tiles around.
Watch this video from the TED conference to learn more.
Uses cited by creator David Merrill include art, interactive storytelling and music sequencing. In one demo, for example, he tilts one Siftable against another to "pour color" into the second tile, as if the color were liquid.
A more elaborate music application his team developed turns the tiles into music sequencing and performance tools. Each tile represents a sound, sequence or other musical element. Basically, you inject sounds into a sequence by bumping a "sound" Siftable against a "sequence" Siftable.
Like many technologists, Merrill gets carried away with idealism, imagining a whole new era of more human-friendly computing right around the corner.
"We are on the cusp of this new generation of tools for interacting with digital media that are going to bring information into our world on our terms," he proclaims.
How many times have we heard that? Unfortunately, computers are still frustrating as ever to we mortals.
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