I'd bet that just about anyone who has used audio, video and/or photo editing programs such as ProTools or Photoshop has wished that they could just reach into the screen and tweak the controls directly instead of fiddling with a mouse. The Lemur touchscreen is an interesting device which graphically recreates the controls of digital audio workstation programs in the configuration specified by the user. While this is designed for a fairly specific and narrow use, it does give an interesting view into a possible future direction for the graphical user interface of many types of programs -- if this type of touch-sensitive screen were to be merged into the actual display screen, the need for a mouse should be reduced quite a bit, and the experience should seem more direct and satisfying. Even better would be a virtual 3-d display which could respond to hand movements within the display area.
Or a holodeck.
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