EDiT, the interactive table i’ve been engineering for InformaSistemi, has been highlighted as one of the innovations of Smau 2009.
Can we still talk about innovations when all the HCI world is turning its eyes towards the “touch”.

In my opinion: yes. Touch technologies will become mainstream in 2010/2011, and there are a lot of them, while operating systems are updating their widgets accordingly. However this does not mean that all applications we use today will be magically improved by enabling multiple touches.
My forecast is, instead, an initial frenzy in creating new apps (see the iPhone experience) where the quantity/quality ratio will also become a factor of criticism towards the real need for the multitouch applications.

Multi-touch is cool ok, but multi-user is the real change.

EDiT has been designed from the ground up with this idea in mind, so it still deserves the “innovative” adjective (IMHO of course).