Archive for Augmented Reality
March 17, 2010 at 8:04 pm
· Filed under Augmented Reality, Mind Amplification, Music, Second Life, Social Networks
Exhorting the world to “start taking the internet seriously“, David Gelernter says:
No moment in technology history has ever been more exciting or dangerous than now. The Internet is like a new computer running a flashy, exciting demo. We have been entranced by this demo for fifteen years. But now it is time to get to work, and make the Internet do what we want it to.
…
Pushing the multi-mega-ton jumbo jet of human thought-style backwards a few inches, back in the direction of dream logic, might be the Internet’s greatest accomplishment. The best is yet to be.
Changing thought patterns can be hard but fortunately there’s help. One source is the solution to the riddle of experience vs memory as shown by David Kahneman and the Short Course In Thinking About Thinking looks very worthwhile as well. Alternatively, one can go into Second Life and as Dusan Writer describes very well
Consider a few of Gelernter’s calls to action and ideas, and then go read it yourself, and extrapolate your view of the Web’s future with what you’ve learned in a virtual world:
The Web, Drifting Into View
George Clinton would say “think, it ain’t illegal yet!” but George was about more than talking:
“Flash Light” is one of the all-time great dance songs, but that only begins to describe its brilliance. It starts with the solid but unobtrusive drumming of Bootsy, allowing the other instruments to stand out. It’s anchored by the shining guitar riff of Catfish Collins, one of the greatest examples of rhythm guitar ever. And it stars Bernie Worrell, who propels the song with an addictive bass-keyboard line while keeping us engaged on the high end with tasty synth explorations. The song on the surface sounds like a simple chant song, but one can hear the battle being raged between life and death here…can Starchild make Sir Nose dance? As depicted on the album cover, he shoots the Bop Gun at him, and Sir Nose must yield. `There’s nothing that the proper attitude won’t render funkable`, and so it happens. Openness overcomes fear, as `everyone’s got a little light under the sun.` And the `ha-da-da-dee-da da-da hava da da`, (based on a Jewish Bar Mitvah chant) is one of their most engaging chants.
This album seriously challenges Mothership Connection as P.Funk’s best overall album, taking previously established ideas to new and exciting levels. It proves that it is possible to create something popular that is still challenging, exciting and revelatory, both on the lyrical and musical levels. Try and find it on vinyl, because it included a comic book detailing Starchild’s battle with Sir Nose done by Overton Lloyd, as well as a huge poster.
http://www.duke.edu/~tmc/motherpage/albums_parliament/alb-funken.html
With a new web-enabled Second Life viewer, Avatar, Alice In Wonderland and the continuing wave of 3D movies, perhaps 2010 will be the year we make contact with our virtual selves.
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August 9, 2009 at 11:59 pm
· Filed under Augmented Reality, Medicine, People, Science
Tonite’s 60 Minutes has a segement called BrainPower which provides stunning examples of brain interfaces peopler are using today which enable them to control computers with thoughts. A preview video is available now – I suspect the entire segment will be there tomorrow. UPDATE: it’s here. The segment mentions something called BrainGate which the FDA has recently approved for clinical trials. Like iLimb that was noted here previously, this is yet another step in the process of people being able to mesh more deeply with machines. There are profound considerations involved in the choice to not be strictly biological – considerations which are close at hand, not in the far distant future.
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July 26, 2009 at 3:15 pm
· Filed under Augmented Reality, People, Things
The augmented reality category here exists because meshverse is about the convergence of people, places, things and events. I’ve been talking about the what IBM calls the Internet of Things from the beginning of this blog but I’ve also emphasized the importance of keeping people in the loop so the notion of having things communicating using the people oriented Twitter struck a resonant chord with me. ReadWriteWeb’s story on The Tweeting House is a real eye-opener. Twitter may play an important role in helping people to stay in the driver’s seat. Some related posts here on the MJ:
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July 26, 2009 at 11:11 am
· Filed under 3D Printing, Augmented Reality, TVIR
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July 19, 2009 at 5:14 pm
· Filed under Augmented Reality
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July 19, 2009 at 5:11 pm
· Filed under Augmented Reality, Second Life, Space, TVIR, iPhone
This past Thursday, July 16th was the 40th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11 which journeyed to the moon enabling humans to set foot there for the first time. Although few people get to go, many benefit from the spinoffs. Regardless of one’s philosophic or political perspective, landing on the moon was quite a unique accomplishment in human history - only 12 people have ever walked on the moon. This is a very tiny fraction of a tenth of 1 percent of the people living today and an imperceptible slice of the 10′s of billions of humans who have ever lived on Earth.
Many people have already seen the commercials with excerpts from the “We choose to go to the moon” speech by President Kennedy (video here) or news accounts. If you haven’t done so already, you may enjoy an interesting cybertrip over to We Choose The Moon(best seen over a really high speed connection) where there’s a real-time simulation of the Apollo 11 mission. At the We Choose The Moon site you can follow precisely the activities of the Apollo 11 mission. When you go there you will see a continuously updated map of the flight path and a 3-D simulation of the actual spacecraft. At the same time you will hear the actual conversation between the astronauts and mission control. When I first looked, the mission was half-way through Stage 6 – nearly 115,000 miles from Earth and I could hear Buzz Aldrin singing and talking to folks from mission control. Today as I write, Apollo 11 is approaching Stage 7, over 200,000 miles away and there’s only static in the background although a transcript of conversation shows that the flight crew just went to sleep.
Although I’m talking about the Apollo 11 being in orbit today that’s obviously not true - we know where Apollo 11 is. The command module is at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. – not 200,000 miles from Earth. And we know the crew is not on board. The rest of Apollo 11 has just recently been photographed on the moon. Still, people all over the world are experiencing Apollo 11 all over again – as though they’ve travelled back in time. Or perhaps as though folks from 1969 had travelled forward in time. Now it’s just a simulation but previously discussed here on the MJ, detailed simulations can be very persuasive – even to the point of becoming indistinguishable from reality. If that seems a bit far-fetched consider how much detail will be captured for the next moon landing a decade from now. Quite a bit of data, audio and video will be streamed live over the interplanetary internet just recently deployed on the International Space Station. What isn’t streamed live will be digitized and accessible for future browsing and use. By 2050, people observing a 40-year anniversary will likely have radically advanced, bionic interfaces which allow for compelling ways to relive the experience. That’s a very long way from the simple “lunar lander” simulations we ran on calculators when I was an engineering student or even the more sophisticated orbital lander programs we ran when I was an engineer at Hughes Space and Communications. However, with Second Life and an HP41-C X running on my iPhone, it’s not quite as far from where we are today 
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February 25, 2009 at 3:57 pm
· Filed under Augmented Reality, Energy, Grids, Technology
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February 25, 2009 at 5:23 am
· Filed under Augmented Reality, Education
Social networks are reaching more people more quickly than any communication technology ever has. Consider how long it takes to reach an audience of 50 million people:
- Radio – 38 years
- TV – 13 years
- Internet – 4 years
- iPod – 3 years
- Facebook – 2 years
from Did You Know 3.0
Since we’re here in Facebook land, it’s interesting to note that according to the founder
More than 175 million people use Facebook. If it were a country, it would be the sixth most populated country in the world.
Social networks like Facebook are more than media, they are virtual locations, places where people gather and interact. There’s something much bigger going on here than communication. We’re interacting with each other on many levels here and we’re also interacting with increasingly sophisticated computer programs that are learning about our likes and interests. How we produce and consume media is changing. At the same time the networks expand out into mobile devices, cars and buildings, they are also reaching inward, merging with our biology. In my comments on an early YouTube version of “Did you know?”, I raised broad social questions about this. On a personal level, I suppose the big question is are you ready move beyond a strictly biological physical existence? In a decade, concerns about privacy/terms of service are gonna seem pretty easy.
Updates 03/09/09:
Here’s a long but excellent account of the history and evolution of Did You Know? from the original author.
Previously on The MJ, a link to a narrated version
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October 28, 2008 at 1:28 pm
· Filed under Augmented Reality, Business
In Business Week’s CEO Guide to 3D Computing there are many topics covered previously here in the MJ. What follows are a few which you should be able to find MJ links for by using the search box in the upper right:
No longer just the stuff of Hollywood movies and Silicon Valley video games, 3D technology is changing the way people do business everywhere. Consider Lori Coulter, a women’s swimsuit designer inside the Macy’s (M) at the Chesterfield Mall about 30 miles west of St. Louis.
Lori Coulter clients needn’t try on piles of swimsuits amid unflattering fluorescent lights in a cramped dressing room. Instead, they discreetly step into a room where the shop uses a scanner to take 140 measurements in less than a minute, then uploads them to a computer, which builds a 3D image and suggests an array of figure-flattering styles. The client chooses a style and pattern, and within as few as three days a custom-made swimsuit is ready to wear.
Lori Coulter is one of the scores of businesses that are being transformed by technology that lets you build and manipulate computerized three-dimensional models. “What we’re seeing increasingly is the greater use of computer simulations,” says Boyd Davis, a marketing director at Intel
…
A typical workstation based on two Intel Xeon processors delivers computing performance roughly equivalent to the fastest supercomputer in the world in 1993, according to Intel.
…
While some within the fashion industry are just now warming to 3D technology, Coulter built her business around it. When she was studying at the Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis in the late 1990s, she wrote a paper about how new technologies were revolutionizing the retail industry
3D Imaging Spreads to Fashion and Beyond
Read the rest of this entry »
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October 28, 2008 at 1:28 pm
· Filed under Augmented Reality, Business
In Business Week’s CEO Guide to 3D Computing there are many topics covered previously here in the MJ. What follows are a few which you should be able to find MJ links for by using the search box in the upper right:
No longer just the stuff of Hollywood movies and Silicon Valley video games, 3D technology is changing the way people do business everywhere. Consider Lori Coulter, a women’s swimsuit designer inside the Macy’s (M) at the Chesterfield Mall about 30 miles west of St. Louis.
Lori Coulter clients needn’t try on piles of swimsuits amid unflattering fluorescent lights in a cramped dressing room. Instead, they discreetly step into a room where the shop uses a scanner to take 140 measurements in less than a minute, then uploads them to a computer, which builds a 3D image and suggests an array of figure-flattering styles. The client chooses a style and pattern, and within as few as three days a custom-made swimsuit is ready to wear.
Lori Coulter is one of the scores of businesses that are being transformed by technology that lets you build and manipulate computerized three-dimensional models. “What we’re seeing increasingly is the greater use of computer simulations,” says Boyd Davis, a marketing director at Intel
…
A typical workstation based on two Intel Xeon processors delivers computing performance roughly equivalent to the fastest supercomputer in the world in 1993, according to Intel.
…
While some within the fashion industry are just now warming to 3D technology, Coulter built her business around it. When she was studying at the Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis in the late 1990s, she wrote a paper about how new technologies were revolutionizing the retail industry
3D Imaging Spreads to Fashion and Beyond
Read the rest of this entry »
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