Everybody put your hands in the air...

In the coming months, the likes of Microsoft, Hitachi and major PC makers will begin selling devices that will allow people to flip channels on the TV or move documents on a computer monitor with simple hand gestures. 

Manipulating the screen with the flick of the wrist will remind many people of the 2002 film “Minority Report” in which Tom Cruise moves images and documents around on futuristic computer screens with a few sweeping gestures. The real-life technology will call for similar flair and some subtlety. Stand in front of a TV armed with a gesture technology camera, and you can turn on the set with a soft punch into the air. Flipping through channels requires a twist of the hand, and raising the volume occurs with an upward pat. If there is a photo on the screen, you can enlarge it by holding your hands in the air and spreading them apart and shrink it by bringing your hands back together as you would do with your fingers on a cellphone touch screen.

- The New York Times, January 11, 2010

In response, we present the following cautionary quote from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

For years radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology became more sophisticated the controls were made touch sensitive - you merely had to brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the component and hope.  It saved a lot of muscular expenditure of course, but you had to sit infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same programme.

And is it just me or is there something contradictory about the phrase "soft punch"?

- Sid