alt Hacker NewsI don't know about these things. To me they just turn everything into a screen.
Sure, it's a little more hands free, and projecting around definitly is nicer than screens. But projecting has a lot of problems too. Shadows, projection surface, ambiant light, heat are difficult to handle, but to me the worst is that it's not persistant. You can't just project 24/7 your family planner on the wall.
I'd really rather have something that prints, or better draws.
You want a recipe => print it, don't beam it.
You want a map of kyoto => tiny robot walks around the page and draws it for you. And you can draw over it if you want.
And it doesn't have to be exclusive, you can do both beam and print. But I think protable printing / drawing has a lot of unexplored potential.
The future of computing is certainly multimodal. What I see with beaming is being both hands-free and prep-free further enhances the spontaneity of life and helps fill in small gaps.
Printing otoh requires hands and prep. That's greater effort. You wouldn't print a recipe if you were just a little uncertain about step 3, you would ask for some kind of just in time modality instead. Voice might be fine for short info but sometimes you'd prefer to have it up and there's beam.