Metaperception in Tokyo

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Two days in Tokyo and I'm still recovering.

First, on Thursday afternoon, I was invited by Prof. Syun Tutiya to give a talk on the future impact of IT on our lives at the National Institute of Informatics. It went very well, or at least I enjoyed it enormously. Superbright colleagues gave me a hard time and we kept discussing for four hours (yes, 4: one hour presentation and three hours of grilling).

Much later, on Friday afternoon, a great meeting at the Uehiro Foundation, whose hospitality was simply overwhelming. We are planning the second international conference on information ethics, which will take place in NY in 2009 (the first took place in Oxford last year).

In between, I was kindly invited to visit, on Friday morning, the Ishikawa Namiki Komuro Laboratory of the University of Tokyo. I was ready for something extraordinary but I was left speechless. I saw the future, thanks to two brilliant scientists: Alvaro Cassinelli, Carson Reynolds and a meeting with Prof. Masatoshi Ishikawa.

It's hard to explain in words what sort of new technologies they are working on. Roughly, they all have to do with HCI and what incredible things you can do without a keyboard and a lot of very sophisticated, smart technologies.

But don't trust my word. I invite you to follow this link and look at their demos. In real life, as it were, I was shocked. If you have seen Minority Report, well, that's old and boring in comparison. Trust me. Have a look yourself. They cal it metaperception.

See for example:

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