Tom Cruise in Minority Report inspired lots of tech companies.
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Minority Report science advisor builds the most awesome conference room

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 22 min

John Underkoffler was the science advisor for the landmark 2004 film Minority Report, and he designed the gesture-controlled user interface that Tom Cruise used in the film to solve crimes in the sci-fi story.

In 2006, Underkoffler started Oblong Industries to build the next generation of computing interfaces, and in 2012, the company began selling commercial versions of the Minority Report interface. These are, famously, gesture-based systems where you can use a wand to make things happen on a big monitor.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.