If you’ve ever seen anyone approach a desktop computer for the first time, you appreciate what a terrific concept the mouse is. But more often than not, newbies will look at the monitor then look down to see how they can interact with what is on screen. They’ll focus on that cool looking oval thingy – the mouse - and move it. The cursor will move with the mouse and the light bulb goes off immediately: “This oval thingy here allows me to move to the different objects on the screen”. Eventually they’ll click on those inviting buttons and figure out how to start programs. If you care about usability, it’s an exhilarating lesson in natural design.

So what if you could take this concept and allow people to click on objects like billboards, cars, tables, clothes that triggers an interaction? Let’s say I’m walking down a street and happen to see a billboard for War of the Worlds. I see a picture of Tom Cruise and go “I absolutely need that jacket”. I “click” on the picture and figure out where to buy it and how much it’ll cost. In fact, I might even be able to order it right there and have it shipped out.

Even if you aren’t impulsive about getting all kinds of information delivered to your phone, the underlying theme here is to be able to connect the physical world with the cyber world – importing objects in your surrounding areas into the digital world so it can be processed there. The potential use cases are mind-boggling.

How would something like this work? There are three things that need to happen before you can click on a real world object: (1) you need a device that can perform the click (2) the device needs to be able to recognize what it’s clicking on and (3) it needs show relevant information about the object to its owner.