WONDERWALL
I'm not going to talk about the election, it only encourages them. What's going on in the wonderful world of entertainment technology? Hmm! Sony have come up with a system where you put a tiny camera on top of your TV and it'll recognise your arm movements- your slaps and punches can be copied by a character on screen. It's not just a device to help the young express their violent yearnings in a meaningful and healthy way though. Sony have also made gentler alternatives, like an interactive window-washing game. Rub those virtual suds off your TV screen! I can see that being big.
Meanwhile, a Dutch team has developed spray-on liquid crystal 'paint' which changes colour at the touch of a button. (It doesn't say how you spray on the buttons.) Apparently It could be used to make giant TV screens, digital billboards and walls that change colour.
I want walls that change colour! Wouldn't that be great? Instead of spending all day in the paint shop trying to decide what colour my walls should be, I can spend all day at home trying to decide what colour my walls should be. I waste enough time messing with the wallpaper on my computer, let alone my flat. Of course you could kill two birds with one stone and wire the computer to this LCD wall. Oh Lord, a screen the size of a wall! Imagine Space Invaders on that. The relative size of the little laser base, you could run back and forth going "Shvee! Shvee!" And if you can turn one wall into a screen, then you can use all four. Surrounding yourself with the video display, immersing yourself in it, would be fantastic. You could play chess with pieces as tall as yourself, or life-size Quake, or World Cup soccer, or ... I must get it! How much is a tin of that paint?
Ah.
So it may be some time before the four-wall-surround home cinema becomes an affordable reality. A decade or two. Possibly a century. But I look forward to it.