Take a second, forget about trash-can icons and QWERTY keyboards and ponder the real interface -- our future interaction with technology. How will we navigate the infosphere in 10 years? Will we use mouses or cursors controlled by biofeedback? Will our browser windows be square and scrolled or dynamically controlled by content, or even our retinas? And what will be the architecture of the infosphere and how will we search it (or how will it be searched by our agents?)?
Wim Wenders' sci-fi opus "Until the End of the World" may be somewhat fuzzy and long-winded, but his visions of the future are impressive. The movie is a cautionary tale about our reliance on images and technology, in which the characters become addicted to replaying their dreams viewed through headsets.
In a minor but memorable scene, Wenders' heroine jacks into a computer network to search for an American fugitive. A 3-D Russian bear appears on her screen, saying "searching, searching," as it dances around a map of Europe and later interacts with a smiling Uncle Sam.
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