M.I.T. Digital Drawing Board: the board that thinks in conceptual visuals

 Being developed by MIT, and poised to be snatched up for commercial development, is their digital drawing board - an interactive whiteboard which takes abstract drawn concepts made of simple lines and lets them act out what would be their natural course in the real world.

 For instance, one could draw a pulley system to move a drawn object, and set it to run its course. Should it not meet your objective, you can  adjust any of the elements simply by erasing and redrawing them, as demonstrated in the video below.

Although it's fairly easy and intuitive for humans, who have evolved visually, to "eyeball' a system and understand that, say, if one of the arms was a bit longer it would make the trajectory work; however it's remarkably difficult to do the same thing using only the abstractions of mathematical formulas.

SenseTable : Interactivity beyond the touchscreen

 Not surprisingly, this technology is being eyed by Microsoft and something very similar is featured in the first few minutes of their concept video of expected advances by 2017.

Other interactive board technologies that are intuitive and act conceptually include SenseTable, a table that takes ordinary objects moved on its surface as blocks of information and responds accordingly.