The replacement for the current PC interface is a drafting board, perhaps with a cordless keyboard. An inclined 3 foot wide by 2 foot deep surface you can write on. Projectors on adjustable arms on either side of the writing surface will project the computer display at an angle onto that board (you need two so your hand doesn't block the display). Something akin to cordless mice and GPS will figure out where your pen touches the board. The board is, well, a wooden board, or whatever other writing surface you prefer. The board is covered with a black surface, except reflective of narrow frequencies of red, green, and blue, so that it reflects the projectors fine but doesn't reflect ambient light.

Why will this win?

• It's more flexible. If you want a 6 foot by 4 foot display instead of a 3 foot by 2 foot one, there's a software control for that. It can be place on any preexisting hard flat surface. The display can be cast on top of a map.
• It's more redundant. If one pixel in one projector goes dead, the computer notices and shines that pixel in the other projector twice as bright. Both corresponding pixels have to go before you see a dead pixel. Mean time to failure is longer, even if you ship less reliable hardware.
• It will be cheaper. As noted in redundancy, the chips are allowed to have a few dead pixels (less than sqrt(n) if there are n pixels), so quality problems aren't as severe as with modern LCD displays. Each of the two projectors is some lightbulbs and some chips with mirrors, so there's no lower limit on the size and weight of the actual hardware. As you reduce the size and weight of something mass produced towards zero, you reduce the price towards zero too. The black writing surface could be a piece of paper on any hard flat surface. The pen and adjustable arms are the only things with unavoidable size and weight.
• It's a more natural interface. People prefer looking down at an angle to looking straight ahead. The current disconnect of moving your hand on a mouse here while watching a cursor on a screen there is awkward, and eliminated by a pen on the board. It's hard to smudge the display if it's a projected image on a black piece of paper. And it's bigger than current displays. Artists and architects, who need to draw on paper and could arrange things however they want, tend to choose inclined surfaces like this.

I put this on the halfbakery. They suggested instead having a purpose-made desk with a frosted glass surface, and put the projector under the desk shining up through the frosted glass. That would eliminate the problem of shadows. It would require a purpose-made desk, though.

Bob Predicts the Future

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