Yesterday, where I’ve been visiting at the MIT Media Lab, we got a visit from George Takei, who has been going around the world with a TV crew to showcase cool research. My brilliant colleague Hiroshi Ishii showed him their group’s spatially transforming inFORM dynamic shape display, and George had a great conversation about the research with Hiroshi and his Ph.D. students.
As I watched this, I couldn’t help thinking about Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu, the senior helmsman on the U.S.S. Enterprise, an iconic role famously played by Takei. When Star Trek originally aired, a Japanese character who was a respected scientist and a man of peace was unheard of on American television — it was truly a groundbreaking role, which defiantly smashed prejudices.
And now here he was — the man who had portrayed a brilliant Japanese scientist hero for a generation of Americans — encountering the exciting research of an actual brilliant Japanese scientist hero in today’s America. Something about this made me very happy.
I had a nice conversation with George afterward. He really liked the way Hiroshi’s work goes far beyond mere pixels on a screen, to interfaces that literally transform in shape.
As we stood next to one of Hiroshi’s spatially transforming interfaces, I told George “I probably shouldn’t say this, but seeing you interact with this futuristic 3D device, I just keep thinking ‘Space — the final frontier.'”
George laughed and said, “I can hear the theme music.”