For about ten years, I’ve been running a project in my Honors Physics course called Days of Miracle and Wonder (yes, title taken from a Paul Simon song). In it, the students are asked to create a business case for a product or service not available today but likely to be so by 2030. Although they are expected to construct a likely technological path from today’s state-of-the-art to that future product, they aren’t expected to actually build their device because, after all, it’s supposed to be 20 years away.
In one of the early years, a team chose as its device a free-standing holographic display a la the chess scene on the Millennium Falcon in Star Wars. They presumed it would involve some sort of fast-spinning mirror.
Today, I came across this — a SIGGRAPH paper and video demonstrating a free-standing three-dimensional display utilizing a fast-spinning mirror. It’s about 20 years early.
I guess I have to revise my project rubric. 😛
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