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Meet Morphees, the Tech That's Already Made Google Glass Obsolete

Interfaces move into the real third dimension.
Fruit Roll-Up via Flickr/Creative Commons/Chris Young

The screen interface seems about as fundamental to our smart-phones and other info-centric devices as electricity. Whether we're touching it--typing words, launching cartoon birds, closing a camera shutter--or just plain ol' reading off of it, that screen is where it all happens: the interface and the content. Even the ahead-of-its-time-that-will-never-come Google Glass is still rocking the same fundamental paradigm. Admittedly, it's hard to see what's beyond it, at least until we're all carried upward to digital heaven with the singularity.

Maybe you can see where this is going, that I'm about to drop a magnificent something different here. Well, no. Or maybe. Actually, this is a rare instance of me not having a snap judgment handy. Tomorrow, Dr Anne Roudaut and Professor Sriram Subramanian, from the University of Bristol's Department of Computer Science, will present a paper unveiling a series of six device prototypes using "shape resolution," e.g. tools that have interfaces in all three dimensions. In other words, devices that change shape depending on their given task.

The researchers have given this technology a very bad name: Morphees. And they're very confident this is the future of mobile computing. For example, you could download a stress ball app, and the Morphee would collapse in on itself. Or, if you were to play a game, the device would change shape into a gaming controller. It … makes sense. I think.

Dr. Roudant was kind enough to supply a quote: "The interesting thing about our work is that we are a step towards enabling our mobile devices to change shape on-demand. Imagine downloading a game application on the app-store and that the mobile phone would shape-shift into a console-like shape in order to help the device to be grasped properly. The device could also transform into a sphere to serve as a stress ball, or bend itself to hide the screen when a password is being typed so passers-by can't see private information."

That is some cool sci-fi.