The hardware in Mac Funamizu's gesture-controlled light switch would be very, very simple—after all, it's just a trackpad. But it's the input methods that make this exciting: just as laptop trackpads can track gestures for scrolling, this light switch would parse them to control up a roomful of lights, either together or in unison. The lights are mapped onto the pad as they are positioned in the room, and a simple sliding motion toward or away from a specific light would brighten or dim it individually. For maximum light-dimming suavity, the circular gesture function takes control of every bulb at once.

This is still just a concept, but it's one of the rare ones that could, with a little ingenuity, plausibly get built. I mean, clappers did, so it sort of has to, right? [NewLaunches]

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