There are also uses for AR besides for information display or helpful applications for day to day activities. With any new technology, there will also be uses for entertainment. For example, the Inception app (http://inceptiontheapp.com/), records sounds a visuals around the user to present their reality as if it is a dream. Some might say that it is a new technologically assisted method for "tripping out", without the drug-induced consequences of course. The uses for AR are seemingly endless, and I am excited to see how it will integrate into our daily lives.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Augmented Reality
Augmented Reality has many uses. In my mind, the most useful aspect of AR is for the presentation of information and graphics in new ways. We have a new layer in which we can experience the world around us. I really like the USPS package size software that as mentioned in the Poynter app, and the restaurant apps even. I can see how AR can be useful for the military purposes. Imagine HUDs (head-over displays) that are so pertinent in video games (such as showing mini-maps, vital stats, ammo supplies) being used to display information on goggles and displays for today's army.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
SR2
William Gibson’s Neuromancer tells the story of a futuristic dystopian Earth where the boundaries and therefore ethics of cyberspace and reality are increasingly blurred. This world, as Gibson describes it, has a sky that is the “color of television tuned to a dead channel” (3), indicating the technological motifs present throughout the narrative. The protagonist, Case, was a skilled console cowboy who routinely ventured into cyberspace to perform various missions for his employers. Case descends into this cyberspace by “jacking in” his “consciousness into the consensual hallucination that was the matrix” (5). He is able to maneuver servers and data landscapes and had become a proficient data thief himself. However, his ability to “jack in” to the matrix had been damaged when a previous employer inoculated Case’s bodily systems with mycotoxins as a punishment for stealing from his contractor. Case had become a degenerate citizen of Chiba City when Molly and Armitage recruited him for his hacking skills. His new employers promised to purge his body of the mycotoxins so that he may once again be free to venture into the global computer network. Case and Molly begin to grow their team, first by stealing a ROM module that saved the consciousness of a deceased McCoy Pauley, also known as Dixie Flatline. The two also decide to investigate Armitage's background. They learn that their employer was once Colonel Corto, a survivor of an unsuccessful operation that attempted to infiltrate Soviet computer systems. They also learn that Armitage is being assisted by Wintermute, one-half of a powerful AI developed by the Tessier-Ashpool family. The Turing Law had forbidden the building of such a powerful AI, prompting the family to split the AI in two, with the other half known as Neuromancer. “What you think of as Wintermute is only part of another, a shall we say, potential entity” (120). Wintermute’s prime directive is to merge with its other half, through the help of Armitage’s team. The team also recruits a criminal known as Riviera, who can project illusions. He uses this ability to obtain the Turing lock password from 3Jane of the Tessier-Ashpool family. Case and Flatline descend into cyberspace and penetrate the Villa Straylight’s cyber-defense systems. Case opens the Turing lock with the password, fusing Neuromancer and Wintermute together to create something new, the “sum total of the works, the whole show” (269) who, after the super-AI's release from the TA prison, becomes the matrix and attempts to find other AIs like itself.
What I find interesting in Gibson’s Neuromancer is his use of urban landscapes and built environments in his representations of cyberspace. Computer data is accessed and understood by computers through zeros and ones, but of course, this is a language not easily decipherable by humans. When Case descends into the matrix, what he experiences are not these binary figures, but rather, “a graphic representation of [abstracted] data ... Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding” (51). Here we see one of Gibson’s early descriptions of cyberspace and its comparison to cities and urban environments. “Program a map to display frequency of data exchange … at a hundred million megabytes per second, [and] you begin to make out certain blocks in midtown Manhattan, outlines of hundred year-old industrial parks ringing the old core of Atlanta” (43). There seems to be synesthetic effect occurring in the perception of a city and spatial information in comparison to the perception of data and cyberspace. As Case jacks into the matrix, he experiences the electronic expanse of weightless information ostensibly mimicking the physical and spatial dimension of tangible urban environment that humans are so accustomed to navigating in their everyday lives. Kevin Lynch, an urban planner, conducted research how individuals cognitively perceive the spatial information of cities. In his book, The Image of the City, Lynch explores how humans organize their awareness of urban environments using five distinct elements: paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks. In the previous two excerpts from Neuromancer we begin to see Gibson’s use of these elements, such as paths, edges, and districts, in his descriptions of cyberspace as city lights, blocks, and industrial parks. When our protagonist penetrates the Tessier-Ashpool ice and breaks into the AI, he experiences the TA cores as “an endless neon cityscape, complexity that cut the eye, jewel bright, sharp as razors … [He] dived past the gleaming spires of a dozen identical towers of data, each one a blue neon replica of the Manhattan skyscraper” (256-257). The console cowboy observes a cyber-representation of Manhattan, and specifically, New York’s RCA building. Case is once again utilizing Lynch’s landmark image of a city to understand his surroundings. This method of characterizing cyberspace has been used many times in cultural media, such as the Wachowski’s Matrix franchise, in it’s mimetic depiction of reality; and even Disney’s Tron, with its fantastical glow of neon structures that illustrates the digital expanse of a computer’s grid. How else can we as humans navigate the atomless binary language of weightless information if not simulated in the spatial and physical manner in which we are so accustom to? Gibson offers us but one solution in his imaginative and seemingly tangible digital metroplexes.
What I find interesting in Gibson’s Neuromancer is his use of urban landscapes and built environments in his representations of cyberspace. Computer data is accessed and understood by computers through zeros and ones, but of course, this is a language not easily decipherable by humans. When Case descends into the matrix, what he experiences are not these binary figures, but rather, “a graphic representation of [abstracted] data ... Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding” (51). Here we see one of Gibson’s early descriptions of cyberspace and its comparison to cities and urban environments. “Program a map to display frequency of data exchange … at a hundred million megabytes per second, [and] you begin to make out certain blocks in midtown Manhattan, outlines of hundred year-old industrial parks ringing the old core of Atlanta” (43). There seems to be synesthetic effect occurring in the perception of a city and spatial information in comparison to the perception of data and cyberspace. As Case jacks into the matrix, he experiences the electronic expanse of weightless information ostensibly mimicking the physical and spatial dimension of tangible urban environment that humans are so accustomed to navigating in their everyday lives. Kevin Lynch, an urban planner, conducted research how individuals cognitively perceive the spatial information of cities. In his book, The Image of the City, Lynch explores how humans organize their awareness of urban environments using five distinct elements: paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks. In the previous two excerpts from Neuromancer we begin to see Gibson’s use of these elements, such as paths, edges, and districts, in his descriptions of cyberspace as city lights, blocks, and industrial parks. When our protagonist penetrates the Tessier-Ashpool ice and breaks into the AI, he experiences the TA cores as “an endless neon cityscape, complexity that cut the eye, jewel bright, sharp as razors … [He] dived past the gleaming spires of a dozen identical towers of data, each one a blue neon replica of the Manhattan skyscraper” (256-257). The console cowboy observes a cyber-representation of Manhattan, and specifically, New York’s RCA building. Case is once again utilizing Lynch’s landmark image of a city to understand his surroundings. This method of characterizing cyberspace has been used many times in cultural media, such as the Wachowski’s Matrix franchise, in it’s mimetic depiction of reality; and even Disney’s Tron, with its fantastical glow of neon structures that illustrates the digital expanse of a computer’s grid. How else can we as humans navigate the atomless binary language of weightless information if not simulated in the spatial and physical manner in which we are so accustom to? Gibson offers us but one solution in his imaginative and seemingly tangible digital metroplexes.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Neuromancer: Chapters 1 - 9
THE SPRAWL
This is one of my favorite passages from Neuromancer so far. When I imagine the world they live in, I imagine an endless sea of lights, illuminating a vast expanse of land with no natural features to be seen; the surface of the earth now impervious with concrete and steel. From space, city lights radiate the gray haze in a warm, but seemingly cold glow.
"Home.
Home was BAMA, the Sprawl, the Boston-Atlanta Metropolitan Axis.
Program a map to display frequency of data exchange, every thousand megabytes a single pixel on a very large screen. Manhattan and Atlanta burn solid white. Then they start to pulse, the rate of traffic threatening to overload your simulation. Your map is about to go nova. Cool it down. Up your scale. Each pixel a million megabytes. At a hundred million megabytes per second, you begin to make out certain blocks in midtown Manhattan, outlines of hundred-year-old industrial parks ringing the old core of Atlanta..." (43).
Even today we are experiencing the advent of the sprawl and of the massive expanses of metropolitan areas: Dallas-Fort Worth, with its hour-long commutes across the region; or even the northeast's Tri-State area, with it's 20 million population encompassing parts of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.
The image pictured above are city lights from space. The resemblance with Gibson's description of the Sprawl is uncanny.
The image pictured above are city lights from space. The resemblance with Gibson's description of the Sprawl is uncanny.
FANTASTIC ARCADE PRESENTS DATAPOP 5.0
The amalgamation of digital sound, music, lights, and visuals of this event is what I imagine the atmosphere of the arcades in Neuromancer to be like, sans the violence of course. Past datapop events have even featured arcade boxes and game consoles on the sidelines for people to play while taking a break from the laser light dancing and chiptune music that permeates the event space. The utter digital attack on your senses is at times overwhelming, but a unique experience not to be missed.
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