The interactive use of machines by humans goes back thousands of years. Possibly the first vending machine was invented by Philo of Byzantium in 220 BCE. By the insertion of a coin, it would deliver a measured quantity of soap to a washstand. This was a mechanical device with an escapement movement. It was an advanced machine, certainly state of the art, but whether it had a perceptible influence on the behavioural development of society is debatable.

Moving forward more than 2200 years, we find ourselves in a markedly different situation. Just 50 years ago the first capacitive touch screen was reported. It took a further 30 years to become sufficiently developed to enter the high-end commercial market in laptop computers, point-of-sale terminals and the suchlike and hand held consumer devices. After another decade the present explosion in touch enabled devices began, at least for hand held devices, its march to ubiquity.

That is the effective starting point for this latest addition to the Wiley-SID Series in Display Technology. Written by a highly qualified group of experts in their various fields, the book covers the major means of interaction: touch, voice and vision. The first two of these are discussed in a single chapter each and vision in the next five, which reflects on the disparate nature of available or soon to be available vision technologies. There follow two chapters which present different ways in which multiple methods can be used to develop multimodal interaction with displays. The book concludes by discussing methods by which 3D images presented on a display can be made more lifelike, more akin to the way in which we observe nature with our eyes, by retaining phase information which is lost with present display systems which preserve only intensity data.

From the above, the reader will conclude that this book offers a comprehensive review of current and emerging technologies. However, it does much more than this by discussing the social impact that advanced interaction will create. Much of this will be positive, but there are some potentially negative aspects. All of these are important issues for public awareness and are worthy of debate. On the positive side are ease of use, intuitive reasoning by the computer/telephone system to predict, discuss and manage complex outcomes from a simple voice command and the enablement of users with physical disabilities who are presently debarred from full use of today's products. On the negative side is intrusion by communication systems into many more aspects of a user's life than presently occur; the mobile phone has been sceptically described as a tracking device which enables its user to make phone calls, but future systems will probe more deeply into our behaviour patterns. Security systems that rely on biometric data to verify identity are in principle more secure than present chip and PIN technology, but if such systems are compromised, then the exposure will be more widespread.

The future will offer a richer human-machine interactive experience than many who will be its users can presently imagine. Past science fiction has already been overtaken by reality. There are issues which must be debated and resolved before some of the possibilities offered by technology will become acceptable by providers and users alike. This book provides the information to inform all aspects of such a debate. It will be an important book for scientists and technologists involved in the subject and for those who develop interactive products. It will also be important to a much wider readership which has an interest in or a need to know how interactive displays will influence future societal and interpersonal behaviour.

Anthony Lowe
Braishfield, UK, 2014