One of the examples of ubicomp like technology that was referred to the most in my interviews in California last year was the diegetic prototype [see slide 29] gestural interface in the film Minority Report. This was predominantly the brainchild of a chap called John Underkoffler who was the “scientific advisor” on the [...]
NTT Docomo have created a few vision videos (but this one is easily accessible via YouTube), many seemed to target the end of this decade. The video below uses yet another schmultzy storyline full of pathos in which to situate (and thus ‘humanise’) apparently futuristic everyday technologies. NTT Docomo depict a rather unsettlingly monolithic future [...]
Liz Goodman pointed out this peculiar ubicomp style vision of the apparently everyday being disrupted by disaster. I would echo Liz’s criticism that it (rather poorly) depicts a pretty awful future. Another (recent) ‘past computing future’ video to add to the list though.
The Ambient Life from Buro Knapzak on
Another past vision of the future of a branded pervasive media that fits within the canon of ubiquitous computing, this time from Nokia in 2005. The video below was a part of a presentation at the Nokia Connection 2005 conference.
“[T]o successfully navigate the many uncertainties facing us in the future, businesses need to have a North Star. Even during tough times, you need to know where you’re going, and how you’re going to pull through this.… I believe one of the best ways to articulate this vision is to immerse ourselves in an inspirational [...]
A clever chap at MIT’s Media Lab Pranav Mistry has created what he calls “a wearable gestural interface that augments the physical world around us with digital information and lets us use natural hand gestures to interact with that information”. This has been picked up by quite a number of people, [...]
I have been collecting together ‘vision’ videos for future(s) computing on my YouTube ‘favourites’. I’ve decided to post them here and categorise them as “past computing futures” posts with the aim of cataloguing what I find. I welcome suggestions and links!
The central quote, by Robert Noyce, from this exhibit at the Intel museum is: “Optimism is the central ingredient for innovation. How else can the individual welcome change over security, adventure over staying in safe places”.
Image taken from Tacita Dean – Disappearance at Sea
In September 1991 Scientific American had a special issue focussing on ‘Communications, Computers and Networks’. An impressive array of articles were collected in this issue, including Mark Weiser’s ‘The Computer for the 21st Century‘, which is often referred to as [...]
Last week I attended the RGS-IBG annual international conference, for which I convened a session and presented a paper.
Shamelessly borrowing a title from a paper by Genevieve Bell and Paul Dourish, my presentation entitled “Yesterday’s tomorrows” was concerned with the manner [...]
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