AirStrike, an interactive display technology introduced by a company called LM3Labs, appears to allow the user to control a live photographic image.
I checked out the company's website, and I'm not totally convinced. I also don't think it's holographic; it appears to use a flat image presented on a clear sheet. It is a nice effect, though; take a look at the video.
(AirStrike 'holographic' interactive display)
Lots of sites have described this as "holographic:" if that's true, there are a variety of sf progenitors.
This will remind many readers of that great scene from the original Star Wars movie in which R2D2 dazzles young Luke Skywalker with a princess hologram.
(Help me, Obiwan Kenobi - you're my only hope)
You'd have to go back a ways to find the first references to this kind of tech in science fiction; the earliest one I know about is the telestereo from Edmond Hamilton's 1928 novel Crashing Suns:
Abruptly I was aroused from my musings by the sharp ringing of a bell at my elbow. "The telestereo," I said to Hal Kur. "Take the controls." As he did so I stepped over to the telestereo's glass disk, inset in the room's floor, and touched a switch beside it. Instantly there appeared standing upon the disk, the image of a man in the blue and white robe of the Supreme Council, a lifesize and moving and stereoscopically perfect image,...
(Read more about the telestereo)
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!)
is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for
the Invention Category that interests
you, the Glossary, the Invention
Timeline, or see what's New.
Humanoid Robots Building Humanoid Robots
''Pardon me, Struthers,' he broke in suddenly... 'haven't you a section of the factory where only robot labor is employed?''
Stratospheric Solar Geoengineering From Harvard
'Pina2bo would have to operate full blast for many years to put as much SO2 into the stratosphere as its namesake had done in a few minutes.'