Tag Archives: technology

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Design and SF: an essay on intersection

spiral_designJulian Bleecker has written a fascinating essay on the intersection of science fiction and design and how they cross-pollinate, and how SF design (mostly movie-oriented) influence actual design, go read:

Design Fiction is making things that tell stories. It’s like science-fiction in that the stories bring into focus certain matters-of-concern, such as how life is lived, questioning how technology is used and its implications, speculating bout the course of events; all of the unique abilities of science-fiction to incite imagination-filling conversations about alternative futures.

It’s about reading P.K. Dick as a systems administrator, or Bruce Sterling as a software design manual. It’s meant to encourage truly undisciplined approaches to making and circulating culture by ignoring disciplines that have invested so much in erecting boundaries between pragmatics and imagination.

[via Boing Boing][image from stage88 on flickr]

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Outsourcing prayer as a hardware routine

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This is something straight out of a Philip K Dick story… or maybe a Douglas Adams novel. Worried that your hectic lifestyle doesn’t leave enough time for prayer? Concerned that your panoply of Earthly duties might detract from your devotionals? Never fear – the good people of Information Age Prayer have got your back:

Information Age Prayer is a subscription service utilizing a computer with text-to-speech capability to incant your prayers each day. It gives you the satisfaction of knowing that your prayers will always be said even if you wake up late, or forget.

We use state of the art text to speech synthesizers to voice each prayer at a volume and speed equivalent to typical person praying. Each prayer is voiced individually, with the name of the subscriber displayed on screen.

Somewhere there is a room full of computers* that sounds like a chorus of Stephen Hawkings reciting the Beatitude… which is a pretty weird thought for a Monday morning. Or any morning, come to think of it. And hey, just in case you were thinking that Information Age Prayer was some sort of cop-out or shortcut:

At Information Age Prayer we think our service should be used like a prayer supplement, to extend and strengthen a subscriber’s connection with God. Traditional prayer is an integral part of this connection and should never be forgone, even after signing up.

I think my brain is broken. More coffee is needed… [via Pharyngula]

[ * – The more I think about this room-full of chanting computers, the more I suspect that it may not actually exist. ]

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Wearable projector augments your reality and makes every surface an interface

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This one’s doing the rounds everywhere, and with some justification. I try to steer away from pure OMG TECH! posts here at Futurismic, but if this doesn’t kick you right in the cyberpunk-sensawunda gland with a big pair of hob-nailed boots… well, you’re obviously not as massive an unreconstructed nerd as I am, basically.

See what I mean? As I remarked to a fried on Twitter last night, I’ll cheerfully trade my mortal soul to the first cellphone provider that offers me something that can do all that. Awesome. [via Hack-a-Day and many others]

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He’s got a TV eye on you

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Have you heard about the one-eyed guy who’s been building a surveillance camera into his vacant eye-socket? No, it’s not a B-list first-wave cyberpunk story, it’s actually for real:

The eye will include a 1.5mm CMOS camera, an RF transmitter “smaller than the tip of a pencil eraser” and a lithium-polymer battery. Footage will probably be sent to recording equipment in a rucksack, which will presumably be worn by Spence.

His aim, aside from breaking technological boundaries, is to raise awareness of the issues surrounding surveillance in our society.

Appropriately enough, there’s a video, too:

Your thoughts, please – should we be hailing this guy as a visionary? [OK, OK, I’ll get my coat.]

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Virtual reality: now covers all five senses, still looks stupid

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Hey folks, remember virtual reality? A decade and a half ago, we were importuned with promises of virtual worlds that we could walk around in physically rather than clicking our way through with a mouse or joystick; computer-generated realities that would – in hardly any time at all – become an enjoyably commercialised take on Gibsonian cyberspace; a destination where we could work, play, learn and… er, meet new people, if you know what I mean.

'Virtual Cocoon' VR headsetAfter the fad for arcade games with bulky headsets blew over (and the Lawnmower Man movie started to look dated), VR kinda dropped off all but the most geeky of radars… but there are still some clades of techo-optimists (who doubtless shoulder their way past back-issues of Mondo 2000 each morning on their way work) striving to bring the golden technodream of the early nineties to fruition.

People like the team behind the “Virtual Cocoon”, a virtual reality headset that promises to stimulate all five senses for a completely immersive experience:

Smell will be generated electronically using a technique that will deliver a pre-determined smell recipe on-demand while the team intend to provide a texture sensation relating to something being in the mouth and tactile devices will provide touch input.

As Gizmag points out (and the accompanying photo makes plain), you’re still going to look pretty stupid while wearing the thing… and it’s probably pretty cumbersome, too. [image ganked from linked article]

Maybe it’s mean of me to snark, but I can’t help but feel this route to VR is a dead-end mud-track; with all the rapid advances in brain imaging and direct electromagnetic cortical stimulation, I suspect that when virtual reality finally arrives it won’t do so via helmets with tiny eye-screens and smell-generators, but through a comparatively subtle skull-cap of electrodes.