Everything Becomes a Screen as Microsoft Imagines Future Productivity

Everything Becomes a Screen as Microsoft Imagines Future ProductivityIf I can offer one piece of advice for people looking to invest in future needs, it would be this. Invest in screen cleaning fluids and wipes. Soon everything from your coffee tables, kitchen counter to the wall in your living room will be a display.

Screens are both shrinking and growing, but they are also becoming thinner, mobile and more powerful everyday. Projection and surface technology are evolving quickly to enable the kind of interaction imagined in this video from Microsoft Office Labs.

It’s been almost ten years since we watched Tom Cruise’s character in Minority Report interact with hologram projections both as a participant and as a target of personalized advertising. Now interactive digital screens are everywhere around us, from bathroom mirrors to interactive out of home advertising and information systems that can accept gestural, voice or input from personal mobile devices.

People now carry smartphones and tablets featuring amazing applications that augment their productivity, providing instant communication, and allow them to connect and interact with personal and public data stored in the cloud. You may even be reading this post on a mobile phone or tablet.

Microsoft’s video walks us through a day in the life of people around the globe as they collaborate on projects do homework or search for an apple pie recipe for the school bake sale.

Can you imagine how your daily life will change when we are freed from our screens?