At TEDIndia, Pranav Mistry demos several tools that help the physical world interact with the world of data – including a deep look at his SixthSense device and a new, paradigm-shifting paper ‘laptop’. In the onstage Q&A (see video below), Mistry says he’ll open-source the software behind SixthSense, to open its possibilities to all.

In Pranav’s own words:

“Among all these experiments, there was one thing in common: I was trying to bring a part of the physical world to the digital world. I was taking some part of the objects, or any of the intuitiveness of real life, and bringing them to the digital world, because the goal was to make our computing interfaces more intuitive.

But then I realized that we humans are not actually interested in computing. What we are interested in is information. We want to know about things. We want to know about dynamic things going around.”

Pranav Mistry is a PhD student in the Fluid Interfaces Group at MIT’s Media Lab. Before his studies at MIT, he worked with Microsoft as a UX researcher; he’s a graduate of IIT. Mistry is passionate about integrating the digital informational experience with our real-world interactions. His ‘Open Source’ vision for his innovation marks him out as a truly inspirational figure in the world of technology, rivalling the likes of Tim Berners-Lee as an information icon.

Some previous projects from Mistry’s work at MIT includes intelligent sticky notes, Quickies, that can be searched and can send reminders; a pen that draws in 3D; and TaPuMa, a tangible public map that can act as Google of physical world. His research interests also include Gestural and Tangible Interaction, Ubiquitous Computing, AI, Machine Vision, Collective Intelligence and Robotics.

To learn more about SixthSense and some more of Pranav Mistry’s work, visit his website here.

Truly inspiring stuff!