Emma Maxwell (2)

My two favorite technology scenes in this film are:

1. The scene where the spiders are searching the building in an effort to find John Anderton and they track the heat all the way to the bathtub. 

• The technology is, first of all, heat seeking devices. Secondly, it is retina scanners. The spiders can cover the entire building in a matter of minutes and they are able to find everyone who is within the walls of the building. Then, after finding a person, the spiders can open their eyelids and scan their eyeball. The eyes provide instant ID for the Pre-Crime division. 

• I think this technology is perhaps in our very near future because we already have devices that can follow heat and we also already have devices that can scan eyes (although they are not very common). Since the pieces of this technology are available now, the end products should be within reach.

2. The opening scene where Tom Cruise is looking at the Pre-Cogs' prediction of the murder and he is using his hands (with the special gloves) to move around in the image, zoom, fast-forward, and select certain frames to freeze.

• The technology in this scene is basically a computer screen that is projected as a hologram and reacts to the person who is running it's touch. Tom Cruise doesn't need to use a mouse or any sort of physical connection in order to control the footage. He wears special gloves covering about half of his hands to connect with the screen and using these gloves allows him to manipulate the images that the Pre-Cogs portray. I think that this was used very effectively because it is easy to see what the images are but also fast enough that as viewers, we can tell that John Anderton has used this machine before. It is also effective because it cuts up the vision that the Pre-Cogs are having into small pieces and it helps the viewers to see what is happening in order.

• I think this technology could definitely appear in our society because a lot of it already exists. Systems such as the XBOX Kinect allow for the user's body to be the control, just as Tom Cruise's hands are in this scene. The screen is definitely possible because it is similar to items such as a Promethean Board or a Smart Board. I think the hardest part about this advance in technology would be teaching everyone to use it.