This one is pretty interesting folks – just illustrates the future growth expected in the social media and virtual world spaces. From the article:
Currently, PlaySpan powers virtual goods marketplaces across 1,000 video games, virtual world publishers and social networks. …
As virtual goods becomes a booming business, PlaySpan has reaped the benefits of technology and media companies looking to incorporate virtual goods into their platforms.
Going through the archives, and found this article from 2007. Ok, not by “now”, but by the end of 2011. We remarked back then on how extreme an 80% saturation level would be, although we were admittedly a little caught up in it too. According to Wikipedia, as of November 2010, SecondLife had a (mere) 21+ million users. Nothing to scoff at for sure – that is a huge accomplishment in its own right. But they’re not even 5% of Facebook’s user base.
Ever played (really… more like explored) SecondLife? The keyboard and menu-based controls to control movement, gestures, etc. are a major barrier to it being as much as it could be. It would be great, however, if someone adapted or replicated Microsoft’s Kinect/avatar capabilities for SecondLife. Like the stuff coming from Israeli company PrimeSense, and the open source development kit. :-)
An old friend posted a month or so ago a valid lament – where are all the great new web innovations? Facebook, Twitter and others are solidly in monetization mode now, and as Nick points out this is probably a pretty good indicator of maturity. In other words: kinda boring.
I don’t know what the next new new web thing is going to be, but I can hazard a couple of guesses for things that are coming, given trends social and technological.
Highly immersive and natural interfaces. I think we are the on threshold of some very interesting hardware mashups. Take 3D displays, gesture-based devices, natural user interfaces, and pervasively embedded sensors. Imagine a Microsoft Kinect-type device, with 3D CAVE-like projections on your walls, seamlessly integrated with high-fidelity video conferencing software. Example: Across from you would be your colleagues in a distant office, and to your right a projection of your Shanghai factory floor, and floating in front of all of you a giant, 3D, exploded CAD diagram of a faulty machine in that factory.
The Enterprise IT Village. In part, this is the pervasive diffusion of tools and solution development amongst employees of an enterprise. We’ll all be building apps without even realizing it – dropping gadgets onto Jive pages and embedding training videos inside corporate employee wikis. But also a fundamental change in the relationship of IT employees to corporate management, to each other, and to the profit center. We need to move away from thinking that “official” enterprise IT has a monopoly on application development. Those of us in IT should be helping our fellow IT’ers the way Google, Amazon, Facebook and others vend APIs to their users.
Sensors on … everything. I need to dig out the article, but I think it was Communications of the ACM had some statistics a few months ago. There are going to be billions upon billions of sensor- and telemetry-linked devices and artifacts out in the world. RFID, Bluetooth, mobile phones, etc etc. Throw stuff like the Microsoft Tag in there too. How will the physical and digital blur and interact? Microsoft Surface only barely scratches the, er, surface.
Pervasive, low-cost 3D printing. Think of what this will do for collaborative prototyping, and trinket delivery. Any other parents out there with Silly Bandz all over the house?. ‘nuf said.
Augmented Reality. If you haven’t seen it before, check out how McDonalds created an augmented reality game based on the film Avatar. I played with it – it was a little rough, but decidedly promising. Standardized tools and protocols could enable a rash of development. Use it for training, product assembly instructions, remote troubleshooting, ….
OK – I guess I broke somewhat with Nick’s original thesis. These aren’t purely new web things. But, there are two themes from these.
First, our digital lives will interact more fluidly (and invasively) with our physical lives, and vice versa. Start imagining how some of the above technologies could be integrated….
Second, the next step change in enterprise innovation will come when we are developing, sharing and trading tools, widgets and data for our peers in an ad-hoc, collaborative fashion for the good of the employee community.
This is an article I wrote on a former blog after seeing a unique artist exposition, in May of 2002. I’ve referenced the “CAVE” once or twice before on IMR. I first experienced the CAVE, as an intern, in the preparations for SIGGRAPH 1992. Despite the nearly 20 years since its creation – it remains one of the coolest technological creations I’ve ever seen.
CAVE = Cave Automatic Virtual Environment Friday, May 10, 2002
Those are the words I would use to describe my experience at the CAVE tonight at UIC. The virtual reality show tonight at the CAVE was essentially the artist’s interpretation of her own psychological and emotional journey to adulthood. Before I describe the show itself, I should set the stage for those who are unfamiliar with the CAVE. The CAVE is a cube, about 10 feet square. Each of 3 walls are made of a semi-translucent plastic film that is used as a projector screen. The floor is semi-reflective as well. From behind each of the three screens computer-generated virtual reality images are projected, and similarly from above for the floor. The images are synchronized such that they paint a smooth and consistent picture across every surface. The active participant, or leader, wears special LCD goggles that also have a spatial sensor so that the computer system knows where he/she is looking. The computers update the screen accordingly to track movement, etc. The leader also has a Nintendo-like controller to manipulate digital objects, move around, etc. Others may participate in the experience as well by wearing lightweight LCD shutter glasses, though the viewpoint will be that of the leader. I believe all of this is powered by a series of big SGI boxes. This whole system was invented back in 1992 or so at The University of Illinois at Chicago, at their Electronic Visualization Laboratory. There are now more than 100 at various universities around the world (though most seem to conveniently “forget” it was invented at ol’ UIC when they are quoted in the press.) I saw it back then and it has matured wonderfully. Anyway, back to the show itself….
Yalu (the artist) starts us off in a giant shrub maze, which sort of reminded me of the one in The Shining, only nothing near as menacing. The detail in the maze walls is incredible, showing individual leaves, and their placement. The overall scene was somewhat as though being viewed through a light fog – there was a touch of a haziness to the environment she created that lent it a certain dream-like quality. After a few seconds we are greeted by a young girl, perhaps 5 years old, in a colorful kimono. She is our guide through the maze. The maze represents the artist’s early childhood, and is populated by her imaginary friends, such as giant ants and a giant deer. Our little guide is mischevious at times, and will duck around a corner of the maze, only to have a new wall appear in a very Doom-like fashion. Soon, we find ourselves riding a giant bee to another part of her little world. Here we see representations of places where the artist used to play as a child, we see a favorite rocking horse from her childhood, and we see eery textured mannequins representing herself and her family when she was a child. One by one, they each fade, leaving only herself, who then leads us on further into this little dream world. The journey takes us on through various phases of her life, confusion, discovery, etc. Her time of confusion is interpreted as a long tunnel filled with thorns and spindly bramble covering every surface. There is a particularly cool scene where we enter a giant MC Escher-like space. A big, empty void, with white staircases going every which direction against a stark black emptiness. Here and there hanging in the void are various images of the artist’s childhood, into which we can peer and gain some insight into her background. The artist treats us to more passages before we come to the last transformation of the show, although we are promised that the journey is not over and that the show will evolve in the future as the artist does.
I strongly encourage anyone who’s in the Chicago area this weekend, to make a stop by the EVL at UIC (get directions here). It is an amazing experience, both for the technological feat of putting the CAVE together, and especially for the virtual reality show itself. It has an ethereal, dream-like quality and it will get your mind working about other things that could be done with this technology. A great show!
Someday, hopefully, we can turn our offices and family rooms into giant CAVEs.
Cheers,
Eric
I want you to check out this video (and below), but before you hop away and view the video follow me on some extrapolation. The video shows the XOS2 robotic enhancement suit being developed by Raytheon for the military. It straps on to a soldier, and has high-power robot joints and motors that the user “wears” to give them superhuman power and strength. Amazingly, they think they could have this out in the field as quickly as five years. Basically, this is targeted currently as a way to help infantry carry heavy loads, and in logistics roles. Remember Ripley in Aliens 2 using the big loader to fight off that evil alien queen? Like that, only without the alien.
So, really, what is the role of the human in this case? Basically, the human provides a framework onto which the suit attaches, of course, and the human provides the intelligence to control it. You swing your arm, it detects that and amplifies the power. So, it’s no stretch to imagine totally changing the application of this technology. First, alter the construction so it’s self-standing – no human needed. The tricky part here is balance, and that’s being solved on other robot projects. So – then the robot is not just powerful, but also physically independent.
Next, deal with the control. No – don’t make it fully autonomous like in Terminator. :-) Give it high-quality video and other sensors, long-range wireless communications, and load it up with high-end telepresence software. Basically, high-fidelity remote control. Someone in a room is looking at monitors of what the XOS is seeing, and can control it remotely. Possibly with a scaled-down XOS suit themselves, just wired up with the sensors but not the motors (this is not too dissimilar to how they do motion capture in movie making now).
If you want to take it a step further – add a high-quality fully immersive virtual reality system like the CAVE* developed originally at UIC, and you’ve got a pretty amazing way to (almost) fully experience a remote environment and interact with it. Imagine yourself in your office or family room, with some remote place projected on the walls around you, and you controlling a robot thousands of miles away.
There are both terrifying and thrilling prospects from this. Let’s cover the terrifying one first, and get that over with.
You think drones flying over Afghanistan and Pakistan are impressive/scary/amazing/inhumane/whatever-your-view – we could now create drone/remote control “soldiers”. No doubt the military already is way ahead of us here – so don’t be surprised when it happens. Did you know that the drone pilots are often working at military bases here in the US? Imagine the ability to wage war thousands of miles away without the political cost of risking your own soldier’s lives? Will that make war more or less palatable to governments?
On a more positive note, and in keeping with our blog’s topic, you could use it for ….. yes, you’ve got it, remote collaboration. Let’s say you have a series of plant inspections you have to make of some potential new suppliers in Europe. They’re in London, Frankfort, Barcelona and somewhere in Macedonia you still haven’t found on the map yet. You could book a couple of weeks, fly over there, get train or airfare between the cities, get hotels, … spend a ton of money, be jet-lagged and out a pile of money. Or, rent remote controlled light-duty XOS-style robots in each of your locations, plugged in to them in the VR and telepresence-enabled comfort of your home or office. You could physically inspect and interact with people and objects in four geographically dispersed sites, all in an afternoon, switching between them with no more difficulty than making a phone call!
Think I’m crazy? Think again. Pretty much everything we do and use every day, everybody thought was crazy at some point in the past. It’ll happen.
Cheers,
Eric
PS, thx to friend Bala for the original article.
* As an intern many moons ago I had a tiny, but fun, part in the release of the original CAVE at the 1992 SIGGRAPH convention. It’s still amazing, even by today’s standards. I’ll do a follow-up post on it. See if you can find it on Google though …
Lego joins the ranks of WebKinz, Bratz and other toy brands with an online counterpart to their real-world toys. I am firmly in the camp that believes Lego bricks are one of the Great Joys of Life, so this is all good.
An old friend posted a month or so ago a 
