John King, CNN’s “master manipulator of the Multi-Touch Collaboration Wall”

NOLA.com’s Dave Walker writes about All Star Weekend, held in New Orleans during the holiday weekend. It notes celebrities in town including CNN’s John King:

Also in town for the All-Star festivities on Time-Warner’s dime was John King, CNN’s chief national correspondent and master manipulator of the Multi-Touch Collaboration Wall.

It’s a good thing “chief national correspondent still comes first in his title, but I wonder how long it will be his prime descriptor? Based on the media’s take, the wall (and it’s master as side kick) is becoming the star. The article goes on:

If you don’t know what that is, you’re not among the huge numbers Blitzer said are plugging into CNN’s political coverage.

The wall, developed by a New York company named Perceptive Pixel, is the breakout media star of the campaign so far.

It’s basically a giant iPhone screen—touch-sensitive and fronting enough computing power to allow King—or whoever’s poking it at an individual moment—to zoom, squeeze and whoosh through maps and graphics.

It’s “Minority Report” meets a pollster’s fever dream, and King, a political correspondent for The Associated Press before joining CNN in 1997, is its first maestro.

“My son jokes with me… that he actually likes what I do now,” King said. “But I’m a little worried about it, because the cab driver who brought me here today said, ‘I love that map board.’ It’s obviously connecting with people in a way beyond what I would’ve thought.

“It scares me a little bit because I don’t want it to become a gimmick. There are a lot of things in television that are for show and not for tell. I think this is great show and tell. You can use the technology to bring some of the nuts-and-bolts of it closer to people.”

I wonder if soon instead of students learning to use PowerPoint (what a horrid thought!), they’ll also learn to present using the Multi-touch Wall in school.