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The coolest thing Sony has built in years might show us the future of computing

Updated Dec 19th, 2018 9:14PM EST
Sony Touchscreen Projector

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Technology companies have been on a mission for years to turn anything and everything into a touchscreen. We saw one of the coolest examples of this back in October when we told you about the MUV Bird, which you can read about here. While the idea that our computing experiences can and should extend off of LCD and OLED screens and onto just about anything around us isn’t new, we have yet to see any company show off a solution that is realistic without being cost-prohibitive.

That may have just changed, however.

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Once upon a time, South by Southwest was a music festival. It has since morphed into an everything festival and tech companies often take center stage to show off their latest and greatest products. Concepts also sometimes debut at SXSW, and such was the case with Sony over the weekend.

As noted by several blogs, the company had a number of devices from its “Future Lab” on display at SXSW on Sunday. It may be quite some time before any of these devices materialize, if they ever even make it to the launch phase at all. It’s still fun to check out Sony’s R&D budget at work though, and one device in particular caught our eye.

Once upon a time, Microsoft built a giant touchscreen table. It was very cool but it was also insanely expensive. But what if there was a device that could turn any table into a touchscreen interface that was responsive and could even interact with objects placed on the table?

That’s what Sony’s “Interactive Tabletop” concept looks to accomplish, and to be honest, it’s one of the coolest things we’ve seen in a long time. The Verge spent some time playing with it and as we can see in the blog’s GIF above, Sony’s prototype isn’t just functional, it’s surprisingly responsive.

Between concepts like Sony’s Interactive Tabletop and Microsoft’s HoloLens, the future of computing is looking exciting indeed. A couple more images follow below.

Zach Epstein
Zach Epstein Executive Editor

Zach Epstein has been the Executive Editor at BGR for more than 10 years. He manages BGR’s editorial team and ensures that best practices are adhered to. He also oversees the Ecommerce team and directs the daily flow of all content. Zach first joined BGR in 2007 as a Staff Writer covering business, technology, and entertainment.

His work has been quoted by countless top news organizations, and he was recently named one of the world's top 10 “power mobile influencers” by Forbes. Prior to BGR, Zach worked as an executive in marketing and business development with two private telcos.