Reminds me of a program I played with way back when, which was effectively a desktop replacement - instead of a flat desktop, it presented a 3d-rendered office building of sorts, with web bookmarks and applications rendered as pictures on the wall and things like that. I forgot what it's called though. Still, I wonder if something like that was re-imagined today what it would look like.
fsn[1] seen in Jurassic Park brings that kind of metaphor to the file system. I don't think it's that practical, but it sure looked wonderful in the movie. I guess we better stick to 2D interfaces as long as we don't have 3D controls that equal mouse in their practicality. Maybe one day there'll be a nice Oculus Rift enabled desktop :)
BumpTop? http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BumpTop It was acquired by Google and promptly buried. It was a fun toy, but I could never see myself using it seriously. Really didn't understand what goog's interest was.
