You’ve seen the movie-version of Philip K. Dick‘s Minority Report, right? You remember those goofy-looking hand gestures Tom Cruise made while interacting with the computers of the future, right?

Those gestures have been the source of many jokes between UI/UX experts, but yesterday I found out they were nothing to laugh about. Those gestures were the result of real work in spatially-oriented computer interaction. MIT’s John Underkoffler was Spielberg’s technology consultant on the film, and convinced the filmmaker to approach that aspect of the films tech as if it were a real R&D effort. The result is called g-speak (“g” for gesture?). In the hands of Tom Cruise, however, those gestures are merged with lipsynching in tighty-whiteys to Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock and Roll.” The effect: Hard to take seriously.

But there were other factors. Hollywood has an egregious track record with oversimplifying computers (see Hackers, Swordfish, Independence Day). I can only think of Pi and Primer as examples of movies that don’t get computers wrong, and they avoid error through ambiguity: you never really see the hardware or software in those films. The other factors the persistence of the keyboard and mouse.

These days, that last factor is getting a run for its money thanks to revolutions in gaming controllers (motion capturing wands and cameras) and mobile devices (touch-gesture input surfaces).

Minority Report science adviser and inventor John Underkoffler demos g-speak — the real-life version of the film’s eye-popping, tai chi-meets-cyberspace computer interface. Is this how tomorrow’s computers will be controlled? (Recorded at TED2010, February 2010 in Long Beach, CA. Duration: 15:23)

John Underkoffler points to the future of UI | Video on TED.com

TED Blog: Pointing to the future of UI: John Underkoffler on TED.com