It’s something that pretty much has to be seen to be believed. So check out this video first, and then let’s continue the conversation below.

This week, Leap Motion, a San Francisco-based startup, unveils its Leap 3D motion control system. Leap Motion appears to so outrank Kinect in terms of its capability that it’s almost a category error to compare them. The technology, reports CNET, can detect motion with up to a hundredth of a millimeter accuracy; it’s nuanced enough to detect fingers, for instance, enabling the possibility of touch-free pinch-to-zoom. (Say goodbye to the question of whether touch screens hurt you.)

Leap, which was founded in 2010, has had investors excited for at least a little while--the company announced $12.75 million in Series A funding a few weeks ago--but it’s only now that they’re letting the rest of us in on the fun. When the device is available for commercial release, it’s expected to retail for around $70, reportedly. The device itself is fairly simple--a USB input device (plus an advanced software platform).

It might seem as though with a technology with such transformative potential, a hardware breakthrough must have made it fundamentally possible. But Leap’s CEO Michael Buckwald tells CNET otherwise: the product is the fruits of tedious years of careful mathematical research. His CTO (and childhood friend) David Holz is apparently something of a math genius. “It's not as if we're using lots of processing power or some new hardware that just came on to the market," Buckwald said. "This is really about a fundamental scientific breakthrough, many eureka moments” that Holz accrued over a half-decade of painstaking work. Holz has clearly put much thought into the technology and its implications; “subtle motions are immediately occurring on the screen, so that there’s no distance between thought and response,” he said.

Buckwald is not risking under-selling his technology (to wit, a section heading in his FAQ: “We are changing the world”). But to be fair, it appears as though he has a right to speak in just about whatever terms he pleases. He states Leap’s aim as nothing less than “to fundamentally transform how people interact with computers--and to do so in the same way that the mouse did.” (For an interview with Buckwald and some cool hands-on footage with Holz, do be sure to head over to CNET for a look at the video near the top of their post.)

Holz lists a range of possibilities for the technology: consumers might use it to browse the web; engineers could mould virtual clay; designers could draw precisely in 2-D or 3-D; and new gaming possibilities could evolve. One is hard-pressed to name a profession that might not be changed by this technology: surgeons and pilots, architects and painters, cobs and robbers alike will probably have their uses for it.

Holz and Buckwald are wise in this: they are the first to admit that they don’t yet understand the full ramifications of the device. Whereas Kinect hacks started as a rogue and semi-tolerated thing that Microsoft finally brought into the fold, Leap wants openness to be in its product’s DNA. “We want to create as vibrant a developer ecosystem as possible, and we're reaching out to developers” in many different fields, said Buckwald. They’re looking for a “few hundred” developers to get involved with their tech, and soon intend to send out as many as 20,000 free developer kits. When it’s officially released--in 2013, according to reports--will the Leap Effect quickly eclipse the Kinect Effect?

As Leap puts it, “This is like day one of the mouse. Except, no one needs an instruction manual for their hands.”

Take one more look at the technology, in a video that differs slightly from the one above.

Ars Technica and others report on a cool miniature Android computer that can plug directly into your TV. The whole thing is housed in a 3.5-inch plastic case, weighs in at 200 grams, and measures roughly the size of a USB thumb drive (a tiny bit bigger, actually.) It’s being sold by Chinese retailers, and you can get yourself one online for the low price of $74 (or 5% off, if you order 5 or more).

Some specs for you (get ready for some alphabet soup): an HDMI port that plugs into your TV (1080p), 512MB of RAM, a 4GB Flash drive (plus a micoSD slot that can bump you up to 32GB). For connectivity, there’s WiFi 802.11b/g. It runs Android 4.0 (ICS), and for a keyboard, you can use Android virtual keyboard or 2.4G wireless keyboard plus a fly mouse. The device has a AllWinner A10 single-core 1.5GHz ARM CPU, as well as a Mali 400 GPU. Need more specs? I doubt it, but if so, this site has tabulated them all.

A cheap, mini computer--does this sound a bit familiar? I’ve reported in the past on Raspberry Pi, the $35 mini-computer. After a lot of windup, the Raspberry Pi has finally made it out into the field, with its creator saying that 200,000 units should be out there by the end of June. Engadget just caught up with Eben Upton at Maker Faire Bay Area 2012, and shot a video of the encounter.

In addition to the much-hyped Raspberry Pi, the new Android computer will compete with the FXI “Cotton Candy,” another USB-sized offering. The Cotton Candy is expected to cost a bit more, $199 plus tax and shipping. The price difference is largely accounted for by the fact that it has a dual-core 1.2GHz ARM Cortex-A9 CPU, with 1GB of RAM.

Why exactly would you buy one of these mini-computers, given their limited capability? Their intention is eventually to get a new generation interested in coding, hardware, and what makes a computer tick. In an era when most of us view the smart phones in our pockets as working a kind of quasi-divine magic, devices like these three mini-computers, with their rough (metaphorical) edges, inspire a fascination with the nuts and bolts of computing. “The Raspberry Pi has the potential to be whatever you want it to be, just like a pile of Lego blocks,” says Adam Turner in a thought-provoking piece in the Sydney Morning Herald. 

That piece is titled, ominously, “Is the Raspberry Pi lost on the iGeneration?” Let’s hope the answer is no.

New Scientist’s Jim Giles calls attention to this freaky fact: that in the future--the rather near future--our interfaces with our gadgets may be our own bodies. “Left your phone at home again?” he writes. “A solution is at hand: make sure it is with you at all times by having it implanted in your arm.” That's certainly a way of having a solution at hand, so to speak.

This is pretty much no longer the realm of science fiction, according to researchers at the Canadian software company Autodesk. The team embedded, somewhat grimly, a button, LED, and touch sensor in a cadaver’s arm. Each element worked just fine when under the skin--Bluetooth connection and wireless charging even worked through the skin.

MIT’s Sherry Turkle weighed in on this, noting that “in general, the trend has been that people are more and more willing to incorporate bits of the machine world into themselves.” After all, to a certain extent, cyborgs are already among us--think of your uncle’s pacemaker. But there’s obviously a difference between elective, versus life-saving, implantation of technology. Where, if anywhere, do we draw the line?

Turkle’s most startling comment to New Scientist is that in some ways, people already behave as though they were cyborgs, as though their smart phones were essentially semi-externalized parts of themselves, like the daemons in The Golden Compass. "People literally cannot be without this device," Turkle said. "They don't feel the same when they are not connected. We live with our phones as if they are part of our body."

Turkle’s ambivalence about technology is about as well thought out as anyone’s--her book Alone Together is a good place to start, if you're troubled by our incipient cyborgism. Last year, she told me in an interview that while the iPhone was “a precious technology,” it needed to be “used in accordance with your social, professional, and personal values.” For me, my personal values probably prevent me from implanting the thing inside my forearm.

While certain benefits come with implanting a gadget--it makes it tougher to lose, obviously--there are naturally risks involved: the possibility of infection, for instance. But personally, my mind rejects the idea of an implanted smart phone more than I suspect my body would. Setting aside all the concerns about infection, lack of privacy, and the like, I simply want--I think most people simply want--the option to not be connected, now and again. I have said before that one of the most important applications of the last few years has been the Internet-disabling Freedom. That Freedom can’t be used on smart phones is oppressive enough. The notion of a life in which we literally can’t be free of our phones, because they’re embedded in us? I think at that point, we begin to lose sight of what it means to be human--not because subcutaneous technology would make us inherently robotic, but rather because it would spell an end to all restorative, contemplative, unconnected silence.