The technology seems pretty wild... the ability to focus the shot in post processing? wow!

Lytro Light Field Camera

There's a rather lukewarm review in dpreview. Key problems: 1.2 Mp resolution, (that's 1.2, not 12, i.e. on a par with the earliest camera phones), no WB compensation, dire focusing screen and slow, slow operation. Perhaps the most significant drawback is that you have to use the Lytro website to take full advantage of the different focusing options, which is tantamount to giving the company exclusive rights over *your* images.

I think the concept is fantastic, but it fails to live up to its promise in its current "dumb user-friendly" format. Pity. If enough early adopters make it a commercial success despite its drawbacks, the Lytro might become interesting to more demanding photographers by its third or fourth version.

But could the technology be part of the future of photography?

Probably, if enough brute force computing power can be brought to bear and the technology is licensed out to other actors.

I can't see any reason why this technology won't eventually become the norm. What will be interesting (once they've shrunk the hardware) is whether it is marketed as a serious,DSLR based attribute or mass population, smartphone based one.