EBay labs employs economists, machine learning and machine vision experts, data miners, natural language processors and human computer interaction specialists.

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Just as human-computer interaction was once a burgeoning new field and now is a given in system design, human-future interaction is poised to become more essential to our strategic planning and innovation processes.

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And just about every technical countermeasure that brilliant engineers devised to protect vital computer systems and valuable information can be accidentally or intentionally circumvented by human interaction.

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Yet the idea is largely based on anecdotes, and researchers such as Karl MacDorman, associate professor of human-computer interaction at Indiana University, are working on experiments to hone in on possible explanations.

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To be sure, Minority Report wasn't the first movie to portray gesture interfaces as the future of human-computer interaction, but most prior examples were deeply entrenched in the traditional mindset of virtual reality and cyberspace common in the 1990s -- think Keanu Reeves in Johnny Mnemonic.

ENGADGET: Minority Report at 10: a look at technology from today to 2054