[adambmedia]

More productive is to try and understand why Minority Report has successfully captured the imagination of so many, persisted over a decade, spawned an entire genre of syfy interface trope that we see in virtually every film having anything to do with future, beyond film, well into games and now commercial interface development.

The assertion that the gesture interface is some kind of virulent ear-worm, dismisses what may be the most interesting thing, the fact that it has captured the imagination of so many. Why?

[jerf]

I don't think it's hard to imagine why the gestural interface survives in the movies. It's very visual. The main actor is moving and full of action and may even be literally jumping around. It's as cinematic as the Hollywood OS representation of hacking is.

Meanwhile, out here in the real world, I'm a real computer programmer and my real interface is even more boring looking than a standard Windows install. Nobody's going to be mining my UI for Hollywood ideas anytime soon, despite the fact that I, on occasion, actually hack.

It's the same reason cars explode when they go over cliffs, bullets spark when they hit things, and all those other tropes.

[hacker_9]

Humans are visual creatures, so if something looks good we want it, regardless of whether it is practical.

[peter303]

There is an article somewhere about how Speilberg commissioned consultants to imagine the near future. What happens you get fresh, imaginative movie imagery loke 2001, Star Wars, Minority Report. Then fifty copycat movies.