"Hi, I'm a Mac..." "Yeah, but I'm the coffee table!"

Remember that super cool Minority Report interface that Tom Cruise was playing around with? Microsoft today has announced Surface, a coffee table with a Minority Report interface that is nothing like I've seen in real life to date.

So here's the thing, you control the interface using your fingers, using natural hand gestures and touch, as though your fingers (mostly the right index finger) were a mouse pointer. You can drag, drop, select, tap... pretty much do what you do with a mouse except you don't need one.

At the same time, the coffee table (as I'm going to call it from now on) recognizes actual physical objects that you put on it. Place a phone on it, the table reads and recognizes your phone and highlights it with a circle. It now becomes something you can interact with. Drag pictures to the phone's circle to sync pictures, music... whatever with it.

A tech'y run through of how it works can be found in this 3 page article: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4217348.html

I suppose from an industry perspective, what this means is that if widely accepted into mainstream technology in 3-5 years time, there will be an increased demand for human interface designers and interior designers who can integrate the hardware/software required to make this work into our homes, shops, supermarkets, public transportation systems, restaurants, nearly everything you can think of.

I suppose psychologically, staring down at a table keeping quiet becomes widely socially acceptable and no longer a sign of antisocial, loner at the bar behaviour. It also means that if you are truly alone with a drink at the bar, you can probably have a pseudo-social interaction (internet chat site or... something else) with your table. You can probably also train your dog to start a report, download your news and blog feeds and cook dinner just by putting paws on the table. The possibilities are endless.

At $5,000 - $10,000 a piece, this little baby is one for the house when I can get my hands on it. And no, you can't put your feet up on the coffee table anymore.