The Apple iPhone brought multitouch user interfaces into the mainstream in the last couple of years, but it's merely the tip of the iceberg. We're moving into a period where the cost of experimenting with new user interfaces is falling; the nexus of sensor technology, RFID, the falling cost of displays, improving computer vision algorithms, and market demand. That's going to change how chemists interact with their computers.

Tangible user interfaces - ways of driving computers by picking up and moving about real objects - are particularly exciting; they're potentially easier to grasp (say, for teaching, museum exhibits), they're more sociable - it's easier for a group of people to collaborate around a table than a monitor, they're more fun, and they'll undoubtedly lend themselves to applications we haven't even thought of yet.

A lot of useful, reusable technology comes from electronic music, actually; performers really need them. Playing live music on a laptop looks an awful lot like you're checking your email on stage if you're not careful! As a result, projects like Reactable, a tangible-interface modular synth which Bjork uses as part of her stage show, are already here and dropping jaws. But that's spurred the development of reusable libraries and software we need to build those kind of interfaces. Take Reactable: it's based on Reactivision, a computer vision library which turns a cheap webcam into an object-tracking interface, and Reactivision's free software. So, using (for example) the Processing language, developed in the computer arts community, it's straightforward and inexpensive to build prototype interfaces like this tangible molecular-structure editor.

It's only getting easier and cheaper to play around in this area, too, so people will - and some of the things they'll come up with will be really new. Given that, the future of chemical computing might look - and feel - very different to the past!