Truthdig.com just published my new article, "Welcome to Alphaville, Avoid the Ghetto." It's about what happens when smartphones turn our entire life into a giant search engine, and then selectively hide the results without telling us.
...The world we see through our smartphones is a curated world, and its horizons are constricting, rather than expanding. Though they’re often billed as modern-day Diogenes’ lamps, outshining the light of day with the light of truth (or “augmenting reality,” in contemporary geekspeek), they would be better understood as corporate-sponsored guidebooks to our own lives, keeping us on the prescribed path and off the road less traveled....
Yesterday, I had a very interesting getting-to-know you chat with my new colleague Chirag Shah. He's a computer and information science guy, and I'm a media and culture guy, but even casually, we were able to find a lot of common ground. Mostly, we talked about the evolution of wireless technology and strategy, and the coming Google vs. Apple vs. Microsoft battles over the mobile OS.
As an aside during our conversation, I mentioned that "of course, eventually the handset disappears altogether, and becomes virtualized through pico or retinal projection, and all that's left is maybe a little bluetooth or RFID fob, and maybe a pair of earphones." This has been an assumption in the back of my mind for the past decade or so, but I'd never really stopped to think about whether it was actually true, and what these developments mean in terms of culture and technology. To put it another way, Apple especially has spent the last decade investing the mobile media/communications device with almost talismanic qualities, and would it really want to destabilize its market power by dematerializing the very object that defines its strategy? Judging by the prevalence of "concept videos" that feature transparent, AMOLED screens and other barely noticeable interfaces, I'd say the answer is yes.
OK, so people want see-through phones and laptops. So what? Is that any different than Crystal Pepsi, and other aesthetic stabs at dematerialization in the marketing annals?
Maybe. In the past 2 years, "cloud computing" has reached mainstream awareness, as a greater and greater number of applications are departing end users' local spheres and entering the ether, accessible (to anointed users) via any and every informatic orifice. This isn't necessarily a good thing, as Cory Doctorow and others have pointed out. Yet, for a variety of technological, economic and social reasons, it's almost certainly the next thing.
What if the aesthetic of dematerialization is a nod toward this trend, and even an intimation that hardware will soon follow in software's footsteps? The immediate version of this would be the virtualization of the device itself, as I described above: visual, auditory, haptic and network interfaces decoupled from one another, comfortably nestling in easy reach of the organs they're supposed to serve. But the next phase would be the disappearances of the interfaces themselves, and a shift of the burden of recording and transmitting information to the already-pervasive, already-redundant network of communication devices in our urban environment.
We're already being captured on dozens or hundreds of cameras as we go about our appointed rounds; why don't we just tap into that network for video communications a la Skype or FaceTime? There are already screens pervading nearly every inch of public space, from elevators to subways. Why not use the closest one to check your email, or catch up on the latest episode of the Daily Show? With audio spotlight technology, we could theoretically walk down the street having a conversation out loud via VoIP, protected by an ensconcing cone of silence. And so forth.
I'm hardly suggesting that these possibilities are a reality given our current technological and social infrastructures. Nor am I suggesting that this is a desirable next phase for communication. But I do wonder whether this vision of the hardware cloud plays into the current trend of dematerialization, and to what degree it's been discussed explicitly within the HCI and design communities. Anyone?
I taught this course as a Masters-level class at NYU a year ago, and the syllabus worked very nicely. Now, my challenge has been to improve, update and upgrade it for my Ph.D. students at Rutgers. I think it's pretty good, but please weigh in and let me know how I can make it better (especially you, former students of mine!) (UPDATED 8/29)
Sometimes the best ideas come from the most minute reinterpretations on existing ones (a subtlety that copyright law steadfastly fails to acknowledge).
Case in point: First Person Tetris. Instead of rotating the falling piece, you rotate the board. Surprisingly difficult, even for us seasoned shape-fitting vets.
Google's new project, "liquid galaxy," is kind of like The Veldt. Once large-scale, flexible AMOLEDs become affordable, this can be more or less seamless.
This is so staggeringly simple and such a deft piece of complex engineering, I am blown away. A new program called PhotoSketch turns simple line drawings into photocollages using image search, mapping, cutting, pasting and blending algorithms. In other words, you draw a doodle, and the program turns it into a photorealistic image.
I can easily imagine the day when this functionality is available for audio and video. Without advanced technical expertise, people will be able to create their own films, games, and songs simply by sketching their favorite actors, locales and musicians into the frame. Of course, the Andrew Keens of the world will decry it as yet another victory for mediocrity over greatness. I prefer to think of it as yet another victory for free expression over cultural exclusivity.
Today, my client Pepsi released The Ultimate Refresh, a remix project allowing anyone in the world to upload their own accompaniment to a track by LMFAO, and to remix other people's submissions with the original song. It's a pretty cool riff on the Through-you.com aesthetic -- four videos play at once, in a 2x2 matrix.
I'd like to take full credit for the idea, but can't; although I worked on the project, I came in on the tail end of it.
Well, it's finally happened. Hasbro and Google have teamed up to launch Monopoly City Streets, an online riff on the capitalist world's favorite board game, using Google Maps as the platform.
Although I think this is a great mash-up, I'm a little disappointed because, from the little the blog and site reveal (official launch is tomorrow), this appears to be more like an MMO, and less like a big game. In other words, it seems to be using computers to bring the real world into the confines of the screen, rather than bringing the datasphere out into the world we inhabit physically.
One of the spiels I find myself giving often of late is about how the moment of the metaverse has passed, and the adventures in meatspace are just beginning. With mobile smartphones, connected cameras, and emerging solutions like MIT's 6th Sense, there's no reason a game like this should be confined by the keyboard and monitor; we should be able to "buy" streets and buildings, and to pay and collect rent, by traversing actual cities as well as virtual ones.
Of course, there very well may come a day when processing becomes so ubiquitous and latency-free that there's no perceptible difference between bringing physical experience into the computer and bringing data into the physical world. But until then, I'd like to be out and about, footloose and fancy free, rather than chained to a glowing square and a brick of keys.
Today I spent an hour on MPR's "Midmorning" (along with Daniel Radosh and Jason Della Rocca) discussing the soon-to-launch Beatles Rock Band, and some of its bigger-picture implications for the media industry and society at large. We also responded to a lot of listener questions. Altogether, it was a nice, freewheeling conversation, aided by host Kerri Miller's terrific moderation.
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