First let me say, Gesture Based Computing (GBC) is fun. From my first experience in my childhood with the Nintendo Power Glove, I have always been interested in GBC. As an owner of an Xbox Kinect for the past 15 months I have a lot of first-hand experience. If you are not familiar the Kinect is an accessory for the Xbox video game console that allows interaction with the system without a controller. The interaction with the console can be performed using voice or gestures. Jumping, ducking, leaning moving is all picked up by cameras and is then translated into movement in the game. While playing golf, tennis, river rafting, etc… is fun; is this technology viable for the productive people? I believe it is, and there is probably a Minority Report style computer in the future for all of us that will be useful for more than just games.

When the Kinect was released in November 2010 there were a lot of individuals working to use the Kinect with their PCs. While a lot of “proof of concept” programs were created, most of them fell under the realm of novelty. Some of the more interesting ones have been acknowledged by Microsoft on this page. On February 1st Microsoft is releasing the Kinect for Windows. While I cannot imagine all of the possible uses, video chat, creating digital artwork, mechanical simulation, and use as an educational utility are in progress.

While I have only written about Kinect, there are others out there. Some are video game systems: PlayStation Move, Nintendo Wii and some are development projects that are in the works. Windows has been between 85-90% of the computer market for many years, it’s a good bet that this technology will be developed for broad usage on Windows first.

So back to the real question, is it useful? I can’t imagine entering data into an Excel spreadsheet, or recording transactions into QuickBooks using only gestures. But ultimately it will depend on the software and interfaces created for GBC. In the coming years it will be interesting to see how this technology progresses.