• Haptics -the ability to experience the sense of touch and apply pressure through a simulated environment. Will this help experts share their knowledge and skills (eg surgeons) in all countries without leaving home?
• Surface Computing – smart surfaces with no keyboard mouse. So do we need to learn to handwrite beyond a basic level? Is it relevant in this day and age? How much longer will we need keyboard skills?
• Gesture controlled computing – a swish of the hand to make yourself understood. How could we use this to communicate in new ways? Does this mean that communication will be more in the head and the gesture than in the vocal chords? Implications?

The videos below explore cutting edge technologies. They pose many challenges to the way we think, and open up many new possibilities. I’m not suggesting all these are positive. But we do need to be watching the trends and keeping up to date if we are to develop our preferred futures.

As you watch the videos you might like to consider some of these questions:

• How could these technologies change the ways we learn?
• As a leader, how will I adapt and help others adapt? What will I keep doing? Stop doing? Start doing?
• How will I enable these new technologies to distribute leadership and to collaborate globally in new ways?

These are just some of the tensions that face leadership for the future. Take a look…and ponder…

Visteon Haptic and Touch Screen

An omnidirectional projector being developed by Microsoft

And another example: The g-speak Spatial Operating Environment inspired by Tom Cruise’s The Minority report film