I grew up in a suburban household with my mum and step father. It was a great childhood. On the one hand, I had a balanced and “normal” week-day life in a great little neighbourhood. And then, on the weekends, my super cool dad would come pick me up and I’d get to break all my mum’s rules. I’d eat sugary cereals and croissants, watch Arnold Schwarzenegger movies and be lavished with toys. My dad wasn’t rich at all, he just loves me like crazy and spoiled me rotten.

While my budget was never unlimited, I did experience a rather choice sampling of the 80s’ and early 90s’ toy spectrum. In fact, such was my dad’s generosity that I often had to talk him out of buying me a toy. Which to my credit, was a very conflicted experience. Even at that young age I was a total gadget whore.

The Nintendo Power Glove was one such near acquisition.

I was nearly blinded by the Cool the Power Glove had garnered from a guest appearance in the awesome 1989 video game themed youth-blockbuster, The Wizard. But, such was the obvious shittyness of the product that even its being declared “so bad,” in that reverse-litteral Michael Jackson sense of the word, couldn’t close the deal for me. I remember standing in that Toys-[backwards R]-Us aisle pouring over the Power Glove box, trying to glean some hope for the products value but finding none. The thing is, it really didn’t work very well.

Twenty-one long years later, that user interface antihero, Microsoft releases Kinect at this year’s E3. And it is everything the Power Glove wished it could have been. It works, and it’s just you and the screen no gloves, no wii controller. Nintendo released a glassesless 3D experience at the same conference. Technolgies are still in their early stages, and they’re segmented between providers. Change will only happen incementally. More than anything, what sticks with me these days is how much less we’re trying and how much more we’re actually doing. We’ve attained a level of results that is, wait for it… game changing.

The times they are a changin’
The nature of our relationship with the things we create is rounding a momentum-filled corner. Welcome to the days when our imaginations must play catch up with our technologies.