Monday, June 30, 2008
On hiatus for home renovations
Around the time of my last blog post, my wife and I bought a “fixer-upper.” Blogging to resume after fixer-upping.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
One more step on the road to the mirror world
When the Street View component of Google Maps debuted, I was amazed. More than anything else, I was shocked at what must be the extraordinary expense and effort of gathering and stitching together that much photographic data.
I was not optimistic about the prospects that the project could be maintained. Could even a corporation as well-heeled as Google afford the upkeep on a fleet of cars equipped with 360° cameras and hard drives, sending them out frequently enough to keep the imagery from falling terribly behind the times—and then give it away for free?
This week, a new component of Google Maps debuted. Along the top of the Google Maps window is a row of buttons offering alternate views: “Traffic”, “Satellite”, “Terrain”, and so on. A new button, “More”, appeared a couple of days ago. Roll over the button and you have the option of adding Wikipedia entries or geotagged photos.
The addition of photography is the most interesting to me, because I expect the availability of geotagged photos to balloon in the years to come. With the boom in sites that allow photos to be indexed and searched by location, how long before we see cameras with built-in GPS that automatically adds latitude and longitude in the photo file metadata?
And with the explosion in the availability of these photos, how hard would it be to use a Photosynth-like program to stitch them into existing Street View photos, updating the view whenever someone, anywhere, takes a picture and uploads it?
Eventually, I expect that products like Street View will morph into a fully immersive 3D model of the world, with heavily-trafficked areas of the real world being updated in something close to real time. Wouldn’t it be great if all the security cameras in the typical urban space could feed into that model? We would be just as watched-over, and could even participate in the watching.
I was not optimistic about the prospects that the project could be maintained. Could even a corporation as well-heeled as Google afford the upkeep on a fleet of cars equipped with 360° cameras and hard drives, sending them out frequently enough to keep the imagery from falling terribly behind the times—and then give it away for free?
This week, a new component of Google Maps debuted. Along the top of the Google Maps window is a row of buttons offering alternate views: “Traffic”, “Satellite”, “Terrain”, and so on. A new button, “More”, appeared a couple of days ago. Roll over the button and you have the option of adding Wikipedia entries or geotagged photos.
The addition of photography is the most interesting to me, because I expect the availability of geotagged photos to balloon in the years to come. With the boom in sites that allow photos to be indexed and searched by location, how long before we see cameras with built-in GPS that automatically adds latitude and longitude in the photo file metadata?
And with the explosion in the availability of these photos, how hard would it be to use a Photosynth-like program to stitch them into existing Street View photos, updating the view whenever someone, anywhere, takes a picture and uploads it?
Eventually, I expect that products like Street View will morph into a fully immersive 3D model of the world, with heavily-trafficked areas of the real world being updated in something close to real time. Wouldn’t it be great if all the security cameras in the typical urban space could feed into that model? We would be just as watched-over, and could even participate in the watching.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Virtual money: first across the divide
Kant once wrote that “A hundred real thalers do not contain the least coin more than a hundred possible thalers.” (Critique of Pure Reason, A599)
These words might have been true in 1781, but at the time I’m writing this, a US dollar is worth 264 Linden dollars. Something unprecedented is going on with virtual currencies.
Kant’s point was to claim that, given a concept, to claim that the object posited by the concept exists is to add nothing to the concept itself. It just describes a particular relationship between the concept and the real world. This seems like a rather academic argument—and it is—but it points out the futility of trying to prove that something exists by armchair reasoning. Kant was specifically targeting Anselm’s ontological argument for the existence of God.
If we were to set about looking for 100 thalers, we wouldn’t have to specify that we’re looking for 100 thalers that exist. The last bit would be taken for granted. So trying to add existence as an additional predicate to the concept of our 100 thalers is pointless, according to Kant.
That would indisputably be the case, if we only ever approached concepts as necessarily referring to objects in the real world. But that’s not true; make-believe is another way that we engage with concepts. A child at play could indeed be searching for 100 thalers that do not exist. I’ve spent a lot of time lately trying to rustle up Gil while playing Final Fantasy XII.
In Kant’s time, the distinction between fiction and non-fiction was clear. But during the twentieth century, mass media allowed fiction to become the jumping-off point for new social realities. Fan communities made the production of entire fictional universes profitable. People began speaking Klingon and invested themselves in social role-playing games.
The social element is key to explaining how virtual currency has broken through to the real world. If I like something, it has value to me, whether it’s real or fictional. If the pool of people who value something is large enough, and trade can occur, than economic forces will come into play. Online role-playing games has allowed the creation of fictional goods that can be traded among massive numbers of people.
It cannot go unremarked that while fictional money has become real, our real money long ago became fictional. With the abolishment of the gold standard and the adoption of fiat currency, our money became nothing but a function of intersubjective perception of value—a move that prepared us to accept the possibility of virtual currencies.
These words might have been true in 1781, but at the time I’m writing this, a US dollar is worth 264 Linden dollars. Something unprecedented is going on with virtual currencies.
Kant’s point was to claim that, given a concept, to claim that the object posited by the concept exists is to add nothing to the concept itself. It just describes a particular relationship between the concept and the real world. This seems like a rather academic argument—and it is—but it points out the futility of trying to prove that something exists by armchair reasoning. Kant was specifically targeting Anselm’s ontological argument for the existence of God.
If we were to set about looking for 100 thalers, we wouldn’t have to specify that we’re looking for 100 thalers that exist. The last bit would be taken for granted. So trying to add existence as an additional predicate to the concept of our 100 thalers is pointless, according to Kant.
That would indisputably be the case, if we only ever approached concepts as necessarily referring to objects in the real world. But that’s not true; make-believe is another way that we engage with concepts. A child at play could indeed be searching for 100 thalers that do not exist. I’ve spent a lot of time lately trying to rustle up Gil while playing Final Fantasy XII.
In Kant’s time, the distinction between fiction and non-fiction was clear. But during the twentieth century, mass media allowed fiction to become the jumping-off point for new social realities. Fan communities made the production of entire fictional universes profitable. People began speaking Klingon and invested themselves in social role-playing games.
The social element is key to explaining how virtual currency has broken through to the real world. If I like something, it has value to me, whether it’s real or fictional. If the pool of people who value something is large enough, and trade can occur, than economic forces will come into play. Online role-playing games has allowed the creation of fictional goods that can be traded among massive numbers of people.
It cannot go unremarked that while fictional money has become real, our real money long ago became fictional. With the abolishment of the gold standard and the adoption of fiat currency, our money became nothing but a function of intersubjective perception of value—a move that prepared us to accept the possibility of virtual currencies.
Sunday, April 6, 2008
New feature
Instead of link roundup posts, I’ve decided to stream my most recent tech-related links on the sidebar to the right.
This should see quite a bit more activity than the mainbar. Given the subject matter and my actual posting frequency, I’m beginning to think that my initial goal of three posts a week was too optimistic. I can see to it that the links list is updated more or less every workday, and I will continue with my roughly once-per-week posting frequency.
This should see quite a bit more activity than the mainbar. Given the subject matter and my actual posting frequency, I’m beginning to think that my initial goal of three posts a week was too optimistic. I can see to it that the links list is updated more or less every workday, and I will continue with my roughly once-per-week posting frequency.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
R.I.P., Arthur C. Clarke
Clarke passed away today in Sri Lanka at the age of 90.
His three laws of prediction, as stated on Wikipedia:
His three laws of prediction, as stated on Wikipedia:
- When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
- The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
- Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Friday, March 7, 2008
Life on the Jumbotron
I went to a Carolina Hurricanes game with my wife and a couple from her office last night, and it gave me an occasion to make a few observations.
The modern professional sporting event is a hyperreal spectacle on a grand scale, in which reality and representation are reflected endlessly, back and forth onto one another, until they are impossible to disentangle.
The constructedness of pro hockey is relentless, and shows up in everything from the idea of professional sport itself—the salaries of men tied to their performance in a series of events with seemingly arbitrary rules—to the indoor climate control that severs hockey from its situatedness as a game of the North and of winter.
Yet the assembled audience gives the game the weight of intersubjectively verified reality, and the reporters on Press Row immediately elevate that verifiability from the level of shared anecdote to the level of published fact.
The game itself is only a fraction of the spectacle. The action below is reflected on the Jumbotron above, where it is given the malleability of media and becomes one element of a hyperkinetic multimedia collage. Live game footage, instant replays, movie clips, player interviews, commercials, celebratory graphics, and audience shots all tumble by at a frenzied pace.
I have sat on Press Row as a reporter, armed with a wifi connection, a television monitor, and a thick press packet full of statistics and news clippings. From that vantage the event becomes a hypertextual artifact, full of references to the communities which sustain it, to past and future games, and to the present game as both live and mediated spectacle.
For the ordinary spectator, the audience shots are one of the most important elements of the experience. We go to the game not so much to watch an event as to be a part of an audience, with all of its attendant rituals. By playing the role of the fan well, you might be rewarded with a moment on the Jumbotron, to see yourself being seen, to become as undeniably real as the game itself, if only for an instant.
The modern professional sporting event is a hyperreal spectacle on a grand scale, in which reality and representation are reflected endlessly, back and forth onto one another, until they are impossible to disentangle.
The constructedness of pro hockey is relentless, and shows up in everything from the idea of professional sport itself—the salaries of men tied to their performance in a series of events with seemingly arbitrary rules—to the indoor climate control that severs hockey from its situatedness as a game of the North and of winter.
Yet the assembled audience gives the game the weight of intersubjectively verified reality, and the reporters on Press Row immediately elevate that verifiability from the level of shared anecdote to the level of published fact.
The game itself is only a fraction of the spectacle. The action below is reflected on the Jumbotron above, where it is given the malleability of media and becomes one element of a hyperkinetic multimedia collage. Live game footage, instant replays, movie clips, player interviews, commercials, celebratory graphics, and audience shots all tumble by at a frenzied pace.
I have sat on Press Row as a reporter, armed with a wifi connection, a television monitor, and a thick press packet full of statistics and news clippings. From that vantage the event becomes a hypertextual artifact, full of references to the communities which sustain it, to past and future games, and to the present game as both live and mediated spectacle.
For the ordinary spectator, the audience shots are one of the most important elements of the experience. We go to the game not so much to watch an event as to be a part of an audience, with all of its attendant rituals. By playing the role of the fan well, you might be rewarded with a moment on the Jumbotron, to see yourself being seen, to become as undeniably real as the game itself, if only for an instant.
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Links: Web 2.0 freedom, VR interfaces, soft luddites
- The Web democratized media for the technologically adept. Web 2.0 is democratizing it for everyone else. But what happens when the regime notices?
- Researchers at the University of Tokyo have created a pair of goggles that recognizes and stores references to objects that you look at.
- Meanwhile, researchers at Carnegie Mellon have created an electromagnetic device that allows you to feel virtual objects.
- Readers report an emotional attachment to physical books. I wonder if this is simply a matter of familiarity, as the article implies. I doubt it. I suspect that the cultural mythos surrounding the book is adding a quasi-moral dimension here. Could you really bring yourself to abandon the good, true, trusty book, emblem of the learned and vehicle of the Word?
- BuzzFeed gently mocks the technology-fasting that seems to be all the rage lately, while providing several links to examples of the phenomenon.
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