Microsoft’s 3D motion capture system for the Xbox 360, called Project Natal, continues to amaze and scare me with the potential it has to make your living room activities more interactive, and more public. Take for example, the post “In The Xbox Future, Your TV Will Know If You Are Yelling, Booing” over at Kotaku, wherein they highlight an angry sports fan interacting with a sporting event:

Imagine a sporting event — Natal could know which team you’re for because it sees your jersey, or knows you thought a bad call was made when you yell ‘boo.’ It learns about you and gets smarter to create a more tailored entertainment experience.

The sporting events/their broadcasters could theoretically partner with Microsoft and collect this sort of  information live, and display it during breaks in the event. For example, it could show the precent of Natal viewers who also thought that call was bad, or how many Natal viewers are cheering for the same team as you, and how many are cheering for the opposite team.

This kind of new interaction amazes me, but also scares me. I find it really eerie how close this situation is to a 1984-esque world, in which your TV watches you just as much as you watch it. Regardless, the technology is very exciting, and applications like this one will continue to catch my interest.

Let me know your thoughts on this kind of living room interaction in the comments!