3-D, and Ditch the Glasses

"The skeleton of a foot floats around a screen in a lab at New York University. Each individual bone stands out with great clarity -- and with good reason. The monitor is an autostereoscopic display that presents three-dimensional pictures, without the need for special glasses.

In addition to NYU's Center for Advanced Technology (CAT), several other companies are developing, or in some cases already marketing, 3-D displays based on a variety of technologies. They should be widely available to professionals within two years, and to consumers within five years.

Such three-dimensional displays open up a whole new world for medicine, science and other professions that rely on complex visualizations. Doctors, for example, will be able to look at 3-D sound scans or MRIs, while molecular biologists could view simulations of structures previously too complex to see, like folded proteins that result from gene sequencing. And of course, the technology will be great for video games." [Wired News]

Imagine when we figure out visual mapping of information... what will it be like to view a 3D model of your search, see the relationships between the resources, and then move amongst them to find the one piece for which you are searching?

And you thought the present was an interesting time to be a librarian!