IO2 Technology Revolutionary Interactive Heliospace Free-Space Display Look ma, no screen. Projection into thin air. Who hasn't seen holograms? Johnny Mnemonic and Tom Cruise in Minority Report use screenless projection, but who realized we would have that technology in our own lives?

O2 Technology today announced that it has completed a working prototype of the Heliodisplay(TM) display, which can project TV, video and computer images into free space -- thin air. You can walk around, or even through, the floating image; something possible only in science fiction until now. The unit, now about the size of a bread box, currently projects images as large as 27 inches (diagonal) with a capability to expand to 150 inches.

When we envision the future of news, good reporting and the ability to write a clear story are the foundations, but the output medium will change how news is produced and will cause it to have a different impact on its audience, or viewer/user, than the flat, stationary screens we have now. To think that the technology isn't part of journalism is to completely mistake what "the medium is the message" gets at. When your newscaster is in your living room and you can reach out and not only touch, but manipulate their "presence" (a hologramatic image will seem less image than presence) its going to be a new kind of news.