Harry Potter and the Internet of Things

Arthur Clarke once declared that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Clarke's words came to mind this week with the release of the DVD of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the latest of the Harry Potter films (and volume 4 in the series, for anyone who's been marooned on a desert island for the last seven years).

Science fiction can shape the way that we think about technology-- I think the concept of cyberspace has own much of its popularity to cyberpunk, video games, and movies like Tron and The Matrix-- but for some future inventors and entrepreneurs, things that they read about as adolescents can shape their work as adults. A whole generation of NASA scientists grew up reading Buck Rogers and Amazing Stories. I suspect that the Harry Potter series is going to have its own impact on technology: within the next twenty years, we're going to see engineers trying to create some of the things that they read about Harry, Hermione, and Rod using. And while broomsticks may forever be the personal jet pack of practical wizardry, it's already clear that other magical objects in Harry Potter's universe are going to become advanced technology.

Take the Marauder Map, which lets you see the location of everyone in Hogwarts. Today there are several ways you can track the location of everyone in a workplace; whether you go with RFID tags in smart cards, video recognition, cell phone signal triangulation, or something else depends on how precise you want to be.

The map itself is tougher, but flexible electronics and displays are already getting into the market. Since flexible displays are, well, flexible, you can roll them up, put them on curved surfaces, and fold them: they'll free designers from the need to take care of displays, and the constraints that are imposed by the fact that displays are flat. For nearly everyone in the industry, e-ink or e-paper is an "old future:" it hasn't replaced LED screens in cell phones and PDAs, or static packaging on high-end products (imagine iPod packaging that played animations while on the shelf, then showed instructions about how to unpack the box when someone started opening it), but the consensus is that it's just a matter of time before it does.

So within twenty years, could you have a Marauder's Map? Sure. What about the most compelling object in magic, the wand?

That's a multimodal interface device-- one designed to "allow human computer interaction with an intuitive mix of voice, gesture, speech, gaze and body motion."

Multimodal interface research begins with the premise that as we bring computer interaction into a wider variety of environments-- off the desktop and office and out into the world-- two things happen. (Caveat: I'm not an interface researcher, I just play one on TV.) First, we need more ways to interact with computers. You can't put a keyboard on a car's steering wheel, even though it would let drivers interact with an onboard navigation system. Nor can you use a mouse on a PDA that you're using while riding the subway. You need other kinds of interfaces-- voice, for example-- to interact with those devices.

Second, the ambiguity of such interactions goes up. How does a car know when you're talking to it, and not to a passenger, or someone on a cell phone? If you're in a place that has several smart objects that can respond to voice commands, how do they know which one you're talking to? A single input might not be enough to let devices figure out when they're being spoken to.

A wand is essentially a multimodal device: it combines gesture and speech. You point at something (often in some dramatic manner), and talk (or shout). In Rowling's world, wands work because they're magic. If you're short on phoenix feathers, a combination of MEMS accelerometers (for positioning and response to gestures), an on-board computer, an antenna for communicating with other objects, and maybe a tiny camera (like the Flypen) might just substitute.

Available within twenty years? The odds aren't bad that you could create such a device, and that within some environments, at least, it would work. Rowling never explains the theory behind magic, but other systems presume the existence of powers, invisible to ordinary humans, that can be harnessed by those with the right powers of perception and training. A high-tech Marauder's Map or wand don't require magical forces, but they do require an environment fairly saturated with other technologies-- RFID, smart dust, wireless, smart devices-- with which they can interact.

Essentially, as computer and communications technology become sufficiently advanced as to become invisible, and as the boundaries between the worlds of bits and atoms grow fuzzier, behavior that currently seems magical will become programmable.

The other brilliant thing about a wand is that everyone already knows how to use it. The user manual can be a sheet of paper (or e-paper) with some handy terms, but that's it. That may be the most compelling aspect of a device like a wand, or a magic map: anyone who created them will be able to count on millions of people already understanding how they're supposed to work, comprehending why they're useful, and knowing why they'd want one.

Essentially, the Harry Potter series is the best, and unquestionably most influential, story about pervasive computing yet written. The Dursleys aren't muggles. They're just living in a neighborhood that hasn't been wired yet.

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