A web page that browses YOU?

With Apple (and presumably other companies) getting closer to rolling out two-way LCD panels, what are the implications for the web? The LCD panel is set to become a big image sensor. It doesn’t seem to be much of a stretch to plot incoming and outgoing photons against each other. What possible relations could they have with each other? And if it is possible with photons, why not other forms of radiation? Infrared? Ultraviolet? Chemical sensitivities?

And what about sound? Why can’t the panel become a highly sensitive directional microphone? Plotting sound as it hits the screen in different areas could tell you a lot about direction and the movement of objects emitting sounds in a space. Imagine a screensaver that reflects the room around it, mixing sounds and images into a pattern…sorry. What about useful things?

I don’t have the answers, just some wild speculation, but the applications could be of a form we have not yet imagined. It seems to me that there needs to be some new APIs that communicate all the possible inputs of these new two-way LCDs with web pages that can gather information.

Medical: “put your hand on the handprint outline so we can collect some vitals on you before we proceed with this remote web-based diagnostic.”

Financial: “Please press your thumb against the thumbrint box on our banking web page.”

Personal services: “Please center your eye in the make-up analysis box and we will generate your ideal pallette of colors for each season.”

Plotting web page input zones or sectors agains actual input would seem to me to be a major advance. We need software that will gather and plot external inputs directly against sensitive areas on a web page. Looks like we’ll need some new form elements. Visible Light Input Box. Infrared Input Box. Directional Sound Input Box. I’m sure there are some smart people out there who will see the potential and figure out how to do this.

Peripheral devices are about to become not so peripheral.