For once, I control the weather.

I'm standing in front of a green backdrop inside a windowless studio at Cybernet Systems, a technology research and development company in Ann Arbor, MI. A digital camera in front of me is beaming my image, real time, to a television monitor that shows a scene typical of a nightly news weather report. There I am, standing before a map of the Midwest. I extend my arm and begin twirling my hand over the blip of Detroit. The map behind me zooms in on the area beneath my palm. The city widens into view and comes into focus. Looks like it's going to be a wet one, folks.

This is GestureStorm-a software system Cybernet developed to let weather broadcasters run through their forecasts with simple flicks of the hand. No wires. No buttons. No geeky audiovisual control panels. Move a hand one way, and you paint raindrops on-screen. Move it another, and you stir up a tornado. The interface is completely a matter of gesture. And if a lot of people have their way, this is only the beginning. Gesture recognition technology aims to become this millennium's remote control-a fluid, freeing means of interacting with all the digital stuff around us. Think Minority Report. In that film, Tom Cruise stands before a futuristic digital display, pointing and waving his way through a cascade of images and documents. This stuff, once the domain of science fiction, is finally creeping into the real world.