.
I found this offering of Keiichi Matsuda’s over at Bruce Sterling’s blog. Matsuda’s work has been profiled here before with an earlier work entitled “Domestic Robocop”. It showed a barrage of augmented reality imagery overlaid with normal day-to-day activities which we will very likely become immersed in within the very near future.
That sort of conjectural simulation of AR only gets better when it’s rendered in 3D.
To be fair, this looks a lot better than the dinky little frame I can offer here n these blog pages - so go to the YouTube page and watch it full rez and full screen.
I know most of us shrink from the possibility of being overwhelmed with visual information already in this intensely technically optimistic and granularly fucked up world of ours - but I really think this shit is just so fucking cool.
I, for one, can’t wait to join the Borg. Then we can get all Pew! Pew! Pew! on the asshats in charge. A middle-aged transhumanist cyborg wannabe can dream, can’t he?
Cheers.
P. S. Posting this prompted me to look back through my other AR posts and I came up with this one from a full year ago. Geez - actually makes it sound like I know what the fuck I’m talking about. Go figure.
The title of this article is as bizarre as the video itself. I found this over on Bruce Sterling’s blog Beyond The Beyond and it is a wondrously brain melting bit of video wizardry that dissects and reassembles the images and sound of the formerly linear presentation of media - much like the Yooouuutube site I blogged about earlier.
That it uses one of my favourites and the best movie musical of all time - “Singin’ In The Rain” - only helps but it also serves to reinforce the ideas behind the technique since it incorporates dance and music. Have a lookey-loo and I’ll rant at ya after you’ve had your head opened up just a little bit.
Now at first blush this might seem like just a weird and trippy gimmick - and it could certainly remain as such. But consider the choices made in the creation of this little gem - it’s not arbitrary work. The repetition of the lyrics, the overlapping layers of the melody, the attendant visuals that are given focus at the requisite moment(s) in time - it’s just fucking brilliant. Check out their otherwork.
And not just as a mashup. The images and sounds drip like rain water upon a pane of glass. This is poetry, folks.
At the risk of hauling out the old adage poetry in motion - it is just that. Regardless of whether the content is repurposed or original, this is a stunning example of where our culture is heading.
I hear you say: “What the fuck are you on about, Robbo?”
Fair enough. Just this:
We are emerging from a culture that has been dominated by visuals - motion visuals. The moving image has become the lingua franca of the past century - it defines us and it defines our world. The power once held by a painted image, a photograph or a sound bite has long ago relinquished its hold upon the minds of our culture - and in its place is the moving image.
Technological and market forces decreed that such images would always come from a combined creative and business elite - a one-way and top-down conversation. The democratization of this technology is allowing the once passive viewer to speak back to those once hierarchal images - to craft a response in a myriad of forms - to redefine our culture by adopting the language of moving pictures and transforming them into poetry. We also get to speak to each other in this way - transforming the culture further by adopting the methods of what was once voices from above to our own voices from within.
Poetry.
Giambattista Vico postulated - back in the early 1700’s - a recurring cycle of three ages of culture: The Poetic, The Mnemotic & The Vulgar. It doesn’t take a great mind to look about and realize what age we are currently wallowing our way through. Vulgar doesn’t even begin to describe it.
But it is a cycle.
The wheel turns - slowly, yes - but it does turn.
And thus we enter an age where the content of our former culture becomes transformed into the poetic. McLuhan oft stated the content of new media was the media of old. This is but one of the reasons why fighting to retain public access to common culture is important. Our voices stem from our ability to speak of what once was by using the voices of that recent time past.
Blah blah blah blah blah blah.
I easily foresee a culture that speaks like the video above. Songs, stories, music, dance, narrative, marketing, instruction - the whole gamut of human communication - parlayed through what now would be perceived as an incoherent too-well-stirred pot of media.
We shall speak in video.
And this speech will not merely be regarded as art or a sub-culture of hipster dialect, Daddio - it will be how we converse.
Just as easily as I type - and you read - these words.
Welcome to the future.
Say what?
Cheers.
P.S. This reminds me of the work of Graham Smith, who I used to hang out with a bit in the early ’80’s when he was at OCA creating his photography based work Skinned and messing around with early experiments in video and cludgey virtual reality simulations. He’s currently deep into the telepresence and immersive video world but still crafting very compelling images.
I’ve posted before about the advent of Augmented Reality. Bruce Sterling has been all over this as well. Today he posted about this fucking awesome video by Keiichi Matsuda, a student at the Bartlett School of Architecture in London.
Here’s what Matsuda had to say about the video:
The latter half of the 20th century saw the built environment merged with media space, and architecture taking on new roles related to branding, image and consumerism. Augmented reality may recontextualise the functions of consumerism and architecture, and change in the way in which we operate within it.
Here’s the video:
This shows a pretty freakin’ accurate look at how our kids are going to be seeing the world around them in the fairly near future. I’m gonna be trying to hold together my damaged synapses long enough to be able to experience this myself and not run away screaming like some old fogey from a past century - which I am - and instead plunge my face deep into that bucket of apples and see what I can come up with.
As I noted before, there will be commercial noise in the AR world as every form of information struggles to gain our attention. The systems we employ to diffuse, arrange, organize and otherwise control this flood of sensorial data will be vital to our existence. Like learning to tune out the noise of a busy city street and still function as a human being - our minds and attendant culture will be adaptable to the cause.
Hard for those us who are not digital natives - (I hate that fucking term) - to conceive of ever being able to survive under such a continuous barrage over overlaid visual and aural stimulation. And yet the most basic of extended communications skills we employ today would have been mind warping to anyone who lived a mere 100 years ago.
This kind of immersive, technological, self-imposed evolution is inevitable and being able to see such forward-thinking examples of what might be will help us prepare for what we need to accomplish as we ease ourselves into the hot bath water of information overload in the years ahead. The further reaches of where we are going with all this is to have a similar experience that involves massive and simultaneous communication with others around the globe - pressing our faces not just against the glass of the candy store window but through the glass of the screen - allowing our senses of the world and our sense of self to merge with the greater shared mind of the net.
Oh yeah - and still retain our individuality and our sanity.
Can we do it?
Or is this just another thing we’re most likely to fuck up?
Cheers.
P. S. I particularly liked the use of the Honest Ed’s ad on the dish washer door.
Hayes also posted a lot of cool videos to illustrate his points - here’s one of them:
The very near future is starting to look like a Harry Potter movie - on acid. You think I jest? Check this out.
The possible uses of AR is mind boggling - everything from education, art, entertainment, military, porn, medicine, research, and - yes - business. In his post Hayes is focusing on the potential business models which are likely to erupt from the widespread adoption of AR and even in that limited context he paints an extremely interesting image of what our world is going to look like.
Picture downtown Tokyo - all around you - all the time.
Rebecca Saxe is a neuroscientist at MIT’s Saxelab and she is making remarkable discoveries about how our brains function when regarding other minds. While still an undergrad at MIT, Saxe identified a very specific portion of the brain which is wholly devoted to thinking about other people’s minds and thought processes. Her subsequent research has been focusing on the development of this brain region, how humans form moral judgements and how to influence this process.
Be sure to watch the whole thing. Around the 11 minute mark Saxe starts discussing Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation where a magnetic pulse is used to disrupt the functions of that part of the brain, causing it to reorganize itself - sort of like rebooting a computer. To her credit she shows herself first testing the butterfly coil apparatus on her own remarkable cranium.
It’s funny and spooky all at the same time.
As with all things that have the potential to change how people think and behave the Pentagon has expressed interest in her work. I love her at the 14 minute mark where she says: “They’re calling - but I’m not taking the call.” Pentagon wankers will still find a way to play with this shit but it’s important we all pay attention to developments like this and not just from a tin foil hat conspiracy perspective - although one has to wonder if a chapeau d’aluminium would thwart such a device.
Tech like this is worthy of our attention because it affects us directly - for good and for bad - and it behooves us to be aware of the consequences of applying technologies which affect our thinking. The light bulb, automobiles, radio, telephone and television are but a few examples of ubiquitous technologies which have profoundly affected our society, our culture, our economy, our politics and our minds. We’re still discovering all the ways movies and televised information have changed us and continue to shape our world even as we pick up speed with our use of the internet and absorb those media as content within the disruptive frontier of the world wide web.
I wrote earlier about the emerging tech and culture of Augmented Reality and how it will likely change how we see the world, change how we think and change how we behave. Discoveries like those of Rebecca Saxe will also play a role in this merging world of humanity and technology. As we explore ways to extend our senses through our tech we will also find ways to implement these embellishments more directly with our bodies and our minds.
Setting aside thoughts of mind control by some uber-authority (political or corporate) - which is not beyond contemplation and certainly something to be watchful for - it’s just really fucking cool to consider how deep inside our individual minds we will be able to reach as we simultaneously reach out with our minds to each other.
Kevin Kelly’s A New Kind Of Mind seems downright tangible now - and it makes this Nokia promo video, which I found over on Bruce Sterling’s blog seem positively quaint by comparison.
I think the future is coming to us - and out of us - faster and faster and that it will be extremely cool.
I’ve posted in these pages - and the previous incarnation of this blog - about the unique and rapidly evolving blend of our technical senses and our immediate surroundings, which we quaintly refer to as “the real world”. Awareness of this extension of our senses has grown enough to give it a catchy name: Augmented Reality. Like all such phrases it tries to explain the whole thing while managing only to scratch the surface and still come off sounding like something a plumber does for $100 an hour while showing off the crack of his ass.
“Okay, Robbo, what is Augmented Reality and why should I give a shit?”
I’m so glad you asked.
This has become a longer blog post than post than most, with a pant load of embedded videos (and juicy links that you must follow or I’ll come to your home late at night and read them out loud to you) because there’s a lot of information and examples connected with the ideas behind AR. What I present here is by no means definitive. How could it be? All of this seems to be evolving faster than I can type. What I posit here merely gives a sketch of what I see happening and some consequences for us to consider.
Here we go.
Augmented Reality - or “AR” as it is also known (and I fucking hate the over use of acronyms in this dirt stupid KFC, McD, ROTFLMAO world of ours) - is the use of technology to enhance our senses and provide a richer experience of the world around us.
A simple cartoon example would be Steve Austin’s bionic eye in The Six Million Dollar Man that could zoom in with really cool “boo-boo-boo-boo-boo!” sounds. While we’re on the verge of having implanted tech just like Steve Austin the reality is more complex, not only in what can (and will) be implemented but also how these ubiquitously enhanced senses of ours will change how we live and behave in this world and consequently change what it means to be human.
One of the most vocal enthusiasts for augmented reality at the moment is Bruce Sterling who has been devoting the bulk of his recent blog postings to the subject and he can always be counted on to point out the deliciousness of fundamental transformative power coming soon to an eyeball, ear, tongue and brain really near you.
Here’s a keynote address Sterling gave a week ago at the Layar Launch Event in Amsterdam:
Thanks, Bruce, now let’s have a practical demonstration of what this funky augmented reality shit is all about.
I’ve posted Pattie Maes TED Talk here before but it’s worth putting up again because it pertains directly to what I am nattering on about. Maes is speaking of research she and her team at MIT have been doing on a project called Sixth Sense
Of course, it’s the abilities displayed in Pattie Maes talk that matter more than the cludgey gear slung around the neck of her colleague.
A lot of people see that video and immediately say: “Yeah, but who wants to go walking around looking like a dork with a big piece of shit hanging off them?” - oh, there are a few but the people who make that comment are completely missing the point.
It’s the context.
It’s the inherent idea that counts. The tech will inevitably, inexorably. become smaller and more wearable. How wearable? Remember Steve Austin and his “boo-boo-boo-boo-boo!” eyeball?
Until we get the Steve Austin Special - competitively priced well below the $6 million price break - we’ll just have to make do with our arms length windows on the world.
That would be our phones.
iPhones and all those who follow in its wake are the AR device du jour. The best known of the lot is NearestTube, which uses the GPS and compass capabilities of the iPhone to help you find the best route on the subway. But, to paraphrase the opening narration of the Six Million Dollar Man: “We have the technology, let’s abuse it.”
Issues of data-privacy aside (see Lawyers below) that’s some cool shit.
It seems these days everyone and their dog are trying to make the next best iPhone app but that’s a far cry from wearable, insertable, implantable AR tech, right?
Well - maybe.
Don’t go thinking that it’s only the big huge well funded mega tech companies and university labs that are coming up with all this cool shit. Another aspect of what makes this tech/sense evolution so cool is how it is burbling and fermenting in the myriad garage labs around the planet. Folks who, on their own time (a la the protagonists of the movie Primer), innovate in their home made laboratories - like part-time Dr. Frankensteins - crafting really wild ideas with readily accessible tech.
Some of this home-brew lab work is focused on genetics and that scares the hell out of me but since this is a happy happy joy joy blog post and we’ll save the “Oh god, oh god, we’re all gonna die.” blog post for another day.
Johnny Lee gave a great demo at TED where he showed what could be done by cheaply hacking the Wii remotes to craft all sorts of intriguing possibilities.
And when you add the Wii hacks to a 3D display and ultrasonic displacement you get a proto-type for a touchable hologram.
I know what you’re thinking and yes, porn in the future will be awesome.
Touching virtual bewbs is but one part of the equation. The true innovators - the ones who will be crafting the truly disrupting uses of AR - will be the folks working alone, in their basement or garage, unleashing what at first appears to be a simple game-like app built from readily available gear and quickly becomes adopted as a new and necessary way of seeing and interacting with the world around us.
Count on it.
Now let’s take this AR stuff a little further, shall we?
Look at the Microsoft Photosynth project.
Amassing the vast and continually growing library of images from around the world, collating them together and intuitively crafting a 3D representation of real world locales. Neat! What’s that got to do with AR?
Show up anywhere and layer on top images from every angle and across a span of time. Mix in a tad of that facial recognition shit and you have a playlist of who’s walked those streets you now tread upon or have gazed out the windows above you. The time of the place will hover over it just as surely as the light which meets your eyes as you gaze upon the actual real world structures. Time - history - formed not just from the perspective of Napolean’s winners but from the experience of any participant who happened to capture a sliver of their time in place, will hang like neglected Christmas lights from every location on the planet.
Make the media layers of AR richer and deeper and the passing of time itself will be reduced in meaning.
And then - there’s virtual worlds.
Oh shit.
I’ve blabbered on about this before. Look at the stuff I just showed you. Now take a more detailed 3D representation of Google Earth. Add the ability to travel that world with an avatar. Add the ability to connect the various virtual worlds together - and, yes, folks are actively working toward making this happen. Stir in any of your favourite virtual worlds. Mash ‘em up. Voila.
You can appear as an avatar in a virtual reality simulacrum of the world and transport yourself to a cafe on the other side of the world - a representation of a real cafe - and sit across from a friend who is actually there. They (and anyone else fitted with the tech) will see you sitting, perhaps ghost-like, in your chair at the table. What used to be called “spirit photography” would now be seen as the next wave of social media.
Personally, I just love the idea of the eventual merging of virtual worlds when World Of Warcraft guilds will storm the barricades of Second Life and decimate the entire place without ever once having to resort to any flying penises.
But that’s just me.
Our virtual worlds will augment our real worlds. The layers of virtual reality that can be woven with our perceived reality is stunning. The world is gonna become a fucking Hieronymus Bosch painting of hallucinations. It used to be just crazy people walked down the street, talking to themselves, seeing visions and walking into traffic. Now everyone’s gonna be doing it. What will the crazy folks do to distinguish themselves?
Speakin’ of crazy folks - let’s get into the shit.
Lawyers and marketers.
Oh yeah.
Let’s kick the marketers in the nuts first.
Folks in marketing say they are providing a service to both producers and consumers in this world by making available the information necessary for informed choices. Bullshit. They help sell crap. They help sell policy. Marketers are scum. I’m with Bill Hicks on this one:
The obtusely sociopathic marketing monkeys, the progeny of Bunyan’s Vanity Fair, will forever seek ways to insert themselves and their message into the line-of-sight of your experience of this world. Like Chaplin in his first film, Kid Auto Races In Venice, or the scene stealing squirrel - but without the charm and humour - they will find and exploit any and every opportunity to get your attention. Mix that up with AR.
Walk down the street on a sunny day, observing the world through your AR filters, and you will see billboards change to suit your targeted demographic; store signs will be augmented to get your attention; directions to sponsored events will compete for display space - it will all get eyeball bleedingly irritating in a very very short time. Some locations will willingly make use of the tech to showcase their wares. Other locations will look forward to making a buck renting the AR space of their street or building to a series of targeted rotating ads.
Some locations won’t want to have these ads over-layed on the real world views of their buildings. Will they be able to opt out? If the net service you subscribe to sells any blank space available for advertising the actual owners of the space wouldn’t have any control of what gets presented in your AR view of the world. This is similar to what’s already going on with Rogers and other service providers who think they have a right to inflict themselves upon your transport through the net, replacing ads, redirecting traffic and generally acting like ignorant, arrogant, greedy douchebags.
You may not be able to escape the barrage of unwanted AR messages that will litter your world view like the road side billboards of yore.
Or would you?
Bring in the lawyers.
I’m usually with Billy The Shakes when it comes to lawyers. They’re fun to kick around - until you need one. But, for the most part, they’re about as beneficial to the growth of humanity as marketers (see Bill Hicks above).
Just as Stanislaw Lem loved to probe the ethics and legal ramifications of robots in our society, we would be well advised to get a preview of how AR will affect our jurisprudence of the senses as touched by AR.
It was a big deal back in the 1970’s when the concept of “air rights” came into being - the right to sell and trade in the real estate that hovered over the actual surface of owned land. Like the debt trades that have recently beggared America, the rights to open space could be bought, sold, and traded as needed. So too the rights to the AR space could conceivably become a viable economic model - controlling what can (and cannot) be augmented over a view of a physical locale. Issues of free speech will erupt - escpecially when vociferously pursued by a business agenda - when any controls are sought to reduce, replace or eliminate any undesired AR presence.
The DMCA, no doubt, will also be brought into play (just as abused as it is today) to prevent the unauthorized use of content, trademarks or logos - or to restrain any unfavourable AR commentary placed up a business. Visible and prominent comments - similar to what might be found on a blog but now hovering in the air in front of any given establishment - thumbs up or thumbs down, restaurant reviews or revealing corporate profiles that do not place a company in the best light could be posted and subsequently suppressed.
Is it free speech or is it graffiti? Where does your right to know stop and where does their right to inflict begin? Could instrusive AR marketing be considered spam? Is the pollution and overt control of your senses a viable claim for legal action? Will large and powerful interests be able to hold sway over how you see the world you would like to choose to see through the technology you choose to apply to yourself?
Yes, indeed, kill the lawyers before they impoverish us all - but not before we get laws passed in our favour.
It all sounds silly because it all seems so much of a cartoon right now, doesn’t it? But we must consider these implications of where our extended senses are leading us. We must anticipate the best and the worst uses to which humanity will employ these innovations.
The current battles being waged over who owns and controls the internet are, for the most part, narrowly focused on the desire of a few large corporations to maintain an old business model by making the internet become the new television versus the desire of human beings to express themselves and connect with each other on a truly global scale.
It would be good to remember the significant part of the AR acronym is the letter R.
Reality.
The internet isn’t television. Despite the proliferation of trivial distractions that threaten, as Neil Postman warned, to amuse ourselves to death, the true value, the true nature, the true destiny (if you will) of the internet is to make our real world more real to us. Once the technology becomes ubiquitous and becomes not something that sits outside of us but is an undeniable extension of who we are and how we experience this world then, and only then, will the really big ass disruption occur.
If you are lucky enough to be free to use this technology to transcend the boundaries of time and space and personal knowledge you will quickly and easily discover what it means to be human.
All other distractions will fade away.
I guarantee it.
Of course, I could be completely wrong and maybe we’ll just end up like a bunch of embryonic meat puppet slaves to the devouring robotic overlords of the Matrix.
Still - it would be more interesting than the drab and petty shit being inflicted upon us now.
I’ll leave the last word for Bruce Sterling in a talk he gave over a year ago about the ubiquitous nature of our technologies and where they are plausibly leading us. A little behind the times now, even after only a year of innovative development, but still a good primer for what I’ve been nattering on about.
Keep your eyes open folks - and look at what you choose to.
Cheers.
P. S. When I said: “Speaking of crazy - “ I did not mean to equate lawyers and marketers with people suffering from or coping with mental illness. That would be a wholly inaccurate and unfair depiction of anyone with a mental illness. My apologies.
P. P. S. Chris Grayson of GigantiCo left a comment on this article - you should check out his blog - he covers this territory in more detail and with greater aplomb than I. Thanks, Chris!
I found this video and a link to a site called Pachube over on Bruce Sterling’s always mind-wrinkling blog Beyond The Beyond and was overwhelmed by yet another leap forward in the growth of the web as an extension of not just our mind but also our consciousness.
I’ve ranted abut this before but everytime I stumble across another piece in this unfolding evolution of ourselves and our technologies my mind can’t help but start shoot out the top of my skull with the inherent possibilities of it all.
Ray Kurzweil likes to focus on the Singularity, that point in the not so distant future when our technology and ourselves will meet as equals, and Kevin Kelly has spun off in his writing of The Technium to explore the seemingly inevitable rise of the web and its attendant technologies as a real world metaphorical mind. My friend Bryan and I trade related news stories we find on the web alternating between “This is so fucking bizarre and cool all at the same time!” and “OMFG it’s Skynet! We’re all gonna die!”.
The overview of this strange perspective on how the web is putting truth to Marshall McLuhan’s assertion that our technologies are extensions of ourselves and that media, our communications technologies, are an extension of our senses and if we don’t treat them as such we’re in danger of letting ourselves be controlled - if not by the technology itself then most certainly by those who choose to assume the mantle of power over where we direct our gaze, what sounds we allow to reach our ears and even, ultimately, if Kurzweil is accurate in his predictions, the sensations of touch and taste - perhaps even our emotional responses themselves.
“Once we have surrendered our senses and nervous systems to the private manipulation of those who would try to benefit from taking a lease on our eyes and ears and nerves, we don’t really have any rights left. Leasing our eyes and ears and nerves to commercial interests is like handing over the common speech to a private corporation, or like giving the earth’s atmosphere to a company as a monopoly.”
- Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 1964
Freaky flaky shit to be sure but when you see the rapid deployment and ubiquity of these emerging technologies - the web itself is now but a mere foundation for what is coming down the pipe - it’s difficult not to nod in assent that we are bearing witness to the growth and development of a massive, collective extension of our senses that dwarfs the telephone, radio, television, and the myriad of other forms of reaching out to see and speak to the world (and the universe) around us.
Dystopian science fiction parables warning of technology developing the capability to think like and then out-think humanity abound. The Terminator franchise, lifted from a couple of Harlan Ellison tales, is but the latest iteration; along with the Matrix trilogy, the completely fucked up version of I, Robot and the deliriously dated but still delightful Colossus: The Forbin Project. I love all those films and I understand how the zeitgeist of fear manifests itself in such stories. Ripping yarns of zombies are the current fashion just as alien dopplegangers, like Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, were the narrative fashion in the McCarthy era.
These stories reflect our doubts and fears; they show us allegories and metaphors so we may better come to understand the changes which surround and confront us. But they aren’t an accurate depiction of any real world truths. Yes, during the McCarthy era (and, to a lesser extent, during subsequent political shifts) there was the real threat of imposed conformity. We live in times of torture and try to acclimate ourselves to that reality with entertaining tales of sadism like the Saw franchise. So too do we craft stories that put our evolving technologies in the role of antagonist, that thing we do not understand and so we fear it and so we must defend ourselves by destroying it. An age old narrative as entrenched in our bones as any fairy tale or campfire yarn.
But here’s the thing: aside from the sometimes seemingly vicious wrath of nature our only real antagonist is ourselves. That’s what we’re really afraid of - who we are and who we may become. McLuhan sought to open our perceptions to this so we can move forward on our own evolutionary path alongside our technologies, comforted and confident that they are not some ‘enemy from the outside” but an extension of ourselves.
That is not the hand of another which lays before me ready to strike - it is mine own hand - and I have the means to direct its action for good or evil.
A whole bunch of fucking words to lay out a simple point with all this Pachube stuff: It is real time tracking of sensorial input for the web mind.
Huh? Say what?
Make the leap with me. The web - an extension of our mind - is learning how to sense - and through that evolution, it will learn how to feel.
What the fuck?!
Oh yeah.
Imagine these inputs expanding (and they will) and becoming more detailed and more varied. It won’t remain as an interesting set of data that is collected, collated and displayed in pretty pictures. It will react and feedback upon itself. What kind of pictures will be displayed when the heart rate, breath rate, body temperature and EEG signals of every person on the planet is displayed in such a way? Will that fantasmagoric display of swirling coloured data show us the planet can blush? Or turn blue with collective sorrow? And what happens when those sensorial inputs, feeding back upon themselves, do more than just make pretty pictures but also trigger real world responses, to help or to hurt, to react. Whether it is by prompting people to act themselves to fix or exacerbate a problem - or providing an automated response with robotic intervention that outpaces our collective ability to say: “Wait a second, maybe we should think about this first.”
Good and bad can come from this.
The thing itself is neither good nor bad - because it is us. We will be very much like the image of the foetus hovering space at the end of Clarke & Kubrick’s film2001: A Space Odyssey, playing with the world, McLuhan’s global theatre. A collective mind capable of collective thought, independent of each person and at the same time an extension of each person, and capable of real world action. It’s going to happen, folks; and in arriving at that point we would do well to make sure our collective young self has the smarts not to fuck everything up.
Cheers.
P. S. This is the kind of meandering shite I dwell on when I give myself a day off. - “Keep the boy busy, Martha, he’s starting to worry me.”
I found this over at Bruce Sterling’s Beyond The Beyond blog and it’s pretty cool shit. Kevin Slavin runs a company called Area/Code and they design cool games that they used to consider were beyond our regular television viewing experience. Here he gives a talk at the 5D: The Future Of Immersive Design conference.
The 5D Conference describes themselves thusly:
From the plasma screen in your media room, to the portable device in your pocket, to the side of a high-rise in Manhattan, savvy broadcasters are creating comprehensive “ecosystems”…, blending television, web, movies and gaming to redefine the experience of television. This panel explores the intersection of design and technology in the creation of “new television”, the experience… created by the blending of media and the interaction of the consumer.
You can watch more videos from 5D here and they’re worth sitting still for cuz these folks are smart and really know how to fuck with your head in creative ways.
All of this falls into the kind of queries Jill Golick, myself and many others have been making as we attempt our self-evolution from the dying existing television industry into the current realms of ubiquitous and immersive digital media.
We keep forgetting that the new shit that is coming down the pipe - if you’ll pardon the sewage analogy, although we are talking about television - is cannot be defined by the old shit that has already gone on before.
It is different shit.
What Slavin points out - admitting his own surprize at the revelation of it - is that television at its best is a mass event in real time. The future of television in that context - with all the new tech at hand - is very exciting.
The blending of gaming and information tech and the ubiquity of mobile devices is going to supplant the existing passive viewer paradigm of the old television industry and replace it with - who the fuck knows? You’ll read a lot of reports these days about how television is adapting to meet and succeed within the changes that are being wrought by the disruptive tech of the net. I consider most of that to be mere whistling in the dark by the old media. Yes, as I’ve mentioned before in this blog, there will always be a place for linear narrative within these emerging models - there will always be mass audience real-time events - but they will be so distorted by the emerging differences that it will be nigh impossible to compare them directly to anything that has gone before.
The old guard of the media industries are desperate eager to find a new business model that will ensure they maintain their assumed role of authority, power and profit over the exploitation of culture as product. The ones who will succeed are those who realize that everything changes and never has it been changing so quickly and so profoundly as it is these days. I’m sure previous generations though the same thing about their own times but Jesus H. Tap-Dancin’ Christ we’re living in a Buck Rogers future today folks! You think for a second that just because someone holds the purse strings they’re gonna stop this rampant cascade of human and technological evolution and innovation? Do you really think anyone is going to be able to find, let alone control, the reins of the net and be able to steer it back into a complacent feeding tube for a docile public? Do you really think the internet is going to end up being just like television?
I sure as shit don’t.
A lot of very powerful and aggressively motivated people want that and are prepared to do everything they can to ensure the outcome they desire. But it ain’t gonna happen. To mix a few metaphors: the dam has burst, the genie is out of the bottle, the horse is out of the barn, Elvis has left the building and that semi-apocalyptic vision of the King, brandishing a Djinn in one hand and a cheeseburger in the other whilst riding a horse acrest a wave that is bearing down upon us all not only gives me the shivers - it gives me hope.
It’s too late to go back - and we can’t force the future to be anything like the good ol’ days.
it just ain’t gonna happen.
I’m always fond of quoting Mark Twain who once said: “History doesn’t repeat itself - but it does rhyme.” The corollary to that is the future will not imitate the past - but it will change us.
