After my last post I’m happy to let an image and some Quicktime clips do the talking. The above image is a screencap from some amazing video clips showcasing Scanline Production GmbH’s new fluid renderer, Flowlines. Check out the videos here and mind your jaw. Imagine that technology – currently available for integration (plug-ins?) into 3D applications like Max or Maya – as a plug-in for a virtual world simulation. Too cool.

Back in the 80’s there was an interesting development in, of all places, the comic book industry. A collision of circumstances – everything from issues regarding creator rights to the explosion of the independents – changed the entire industry (the wikipedia has a decent entry on this period here). As I was living in San Diego at the time, I had an almost front row seat to some remarkable changes (San Diego, by virtue of it’s huge comic book convention, being an epicenter of sorts). One change was the rapid growth in specialty comic shops which carried not just the major independents, indy zines and an increasing flood of anime from Japan; but “direct to market” comics by the majors; things you couldn’t get at the convenience store. There were of course comic shops long before (one being my childhood favorite, the infamous Planet Comics), but before this change they weren’t really treated much differently than the local 7-11.

What makes all that relevant now is that the humble comic book is still on media’s cutting edge and probably a pretty good indicator of where things might be headed. They did it with creator rights (spear-headed in part by Neal Adams in the late 70’s). They did with self-publishing. And they did it with direct-to-market product; going from mass distribution straight to the consumer at these specialty shops. They were, in effect, singing Anderson’s Long Tail tune before we even had the sheet music (and it’s one reason that reading Anderson’s original article on Wired wasn’t so much revelation for me as it was confirmation of where I saw things headed).

Since the rise of computers and the internet, there have of course come changes to the comic book market. Videogames have eaten into sales (some were saying not so long ago that comics would simply disappear in this new environment). Webcomix have sprung up and slowly gained sophistication and audience. Indy communities who were once held together by specialty zines (like Tim Corrigan’s “Small Press Comics Explosion”) have banded together online and sprouted annual meet-ups and conventions. And more recently print-on-demand has emerged as an option for small press people unable to fork over the cash for even the smallest of print runs (I won’t get into the debate over whether POD is worthwhile). All very interesting stuff. And relevant to anyone and everyone selling a product or service… especially when fab-on-demand and open source enter the picture.

I like shifting around so I’m going to do that now and recount an interesting article I read back in 1997 while sitting in traffic. In Toyama, Japan. The article was in one of those Eastern versions of an American magazine; the kind that Western executives stuck in overseas assignments have lying around their offices. The article was about the Japanese pipeline for all that anime stuff that was flowing West (it was still kinda new to lots of people). It described how a property might begin life as a comic carried on a newstand (unlike the U.S. which gave birth to the form, the rest of the world attaches no stigma to reading comics, and because of this the medium has shown itself to be an excellent proving ground for new ideas). If a particular comic was successful, it might then be moved up the media chain.

As a property successfully moved upward – indicative of it’s mass appeal – it became increasingly less risky to sink larger chunks of capital into it. This meant that at the top of the pyramid, a movie might be financed or tooling to manufacture toys might be purchased. The big difference between that and what seemingly happens in the West is planning. A property like Frank Miller’s “Sin City“, for example, was popular from the beginning, yet was only made into a movie recently – long after its debute in the early 90’s. Why the delay? Miller has an excellent track record in both comics and film. It was a hot property; one that the Japanese would have groomed. What gives? Well, the way I see things, it’s like Japanese companies have Method, and U.S. companies generally have Madness. They have a steady, long-term approach, and we have a hit-or-miss short term one based too often on some executive’s gut feeling (shades of “Brazil“). The movie was a hit of course, yet it wouldn’t have been made if not for the efforts of cutting edge director Robert Rodriguez. Is all this sounding familiar? It should. News lately has been carrying reports that Toyota will likely overtake GM as the largest automobile manufacturer in the world sometime within the next year or two. How does that happen if not for a lack of long-term planning.

The point I’m making is that there are things to learn, even from lowly comic books and economically-troubled island nations. So let’s learn something.

Boing Boing is carrying an entry on a new multi-spatial comic called “The Bold Explorers” created by Jim Munroe (see his announcement here). The comic was created partially from input from readers of a previous work, can be read for free online, and can be purchased print-on-demand from online service Lulu. Sounds like Jim is keeping his word:

Jim Munroe is a novelist who left HarperCollins to showcase and propagate indie press alternatives to Rupert Murdoch-style consolidation. There’s more than one way to play the publishing game.

There’s also more than one way to play the manufacturing game. Expect news any day of an emerging direct-to-niche world with products that span the real and the virtual. So plan ahead. Read your comics.

It’s been so long I stopped paying attention. As a design student in the early 90’s I worked on concepts for a home media gateway (a “black box” which is effectively the same thing as Microsoft’s XBox 360), a holographic display device and holographic storage, so this news is a long time in coming and very welcome.

Computerworld has an article from last week titled “Turner Entertainment turns to holographic storage” that I’ve just now read. From the article:

Turner Entertainment Networks has its lenses focused on holographic storage for the future of storing and retrieving its movies, cartoons and commercial spots. The network giant has completed a test of the cutting-edge storage technology, which it said will soon move the company away from tape- and disk-based storage.

I wasn’t aware things were so far along. Now imagine the advantages of having holographic memory for virtual worlds. Not only can it grow more easily at less cost, the memory is random access – unlike current storage devices. It’s faster and more easily accessed. And for consumers, the ability to maintain larger caches means that distinctions between data types becomes less an issue as they can locally store more information. I’ve been wondering lately about an increased mix of 3D mesh data and parametric data in the Second Life virtual space. This is the kind of news that opens up some possibilities for the future; including privately-hosted sims.

Besides that, all the news stories of the new XBox 360, the $100 Laptop, and now this make me want to dig out my old sketches and do something creative. Very cool news.

via Wired

Although there are significantly fewer entries here covering rapid-prototyping and nano-fabrication, that’s no indication I haven’t been watching and reading. The guys over on RepRap have been plugging along. There is occasional news of some new 3D printer coming onto the market… sometimes with a neat feature or greater capacity. We’ve got news of printing human organs. But then every so often the bio-fab segment pops up with something I believe is pretty important. Like now.

Via WorldChanging comes word on their website of an interesting development: a demonstration by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco showing how light can be used to trigger and control bacterial functions. This is significant in that we appear to now have the ability to create biological switches. For example, by directing laser light at a particular bacteria, we could cause it to switch outputs; it could be munching along on toxic styrene waste and leaving Product A in its place, and with a simple trigger activation it could produce Product B. Now assume that Product A is nothing but some other bacteria’s food (and in turn it produces a similarly benign output which is the food for another and so forth and so on, thus keeping a system in equilibrium). Product B however might be something else entirely, including the input to a whole chain of processes resulting in the creation of raw materials suitable for manufacturing.

Biomimicry is already suggesting solutions to nano-scale fabrication (see my earlier post). But why bother with mimicry? I know I tend to segregate biological science from traditional engineering, but there’s absolutely no reason to do so. Further, I suspect I’m not alone in this. Just look at the way we generally regard the integration of biological and metallic components. From Giger’s biomechanical horrors to Tetsuo: The Iron Man, we seem to be predisposed to separating the two (something to do with millenia of using foreign objects to kill each other, perhaps). Time to get past that and realize that our future may not be gleaming cities of steel and glass, but glistening organics.

Maybe the Master Plan is to eventually create a world full of noodly appendages and researchers at UCSF are just serving the Master.

Howard be thy name. Ramen.

{Wired News is carrying an article on it now. Worth reading. Link.}

Last night while surfing the Second Life forums I noticed a familiar-sounding thread title: “Grid Under Attack“. Seems as if the availability of free account sign-ups has brought its share of script kiddies and griefers (or maybe just made it easier for repeat offenders to get new accounts). And like the last one, this was an attack of the self-replicating (and poorly-textured) spheres; a rather simplistic but dynamic bit of programming which probably makes it intriguing for noobs. For anyone who’s wondering what a simple computer virus looks like in a virtual world, the above image (snapped in-world by SL resident Alyssa Bijoux) is a pretty good example.

Unlike the last grid attack however, this one was contained in an interesting fashion: Linden Lab created a “firebreak“. In other words, to prevent the self-replicating objects from bouncing their way across borders into uninfected regions (each computer server/sim borders on another server), they simply cut off access (or as described over on Clickable Culture, they erected a “virtual firewall” – I like that). You can see the fireline on the image of the virtual world map (courtesy SL resident Broken Templar) here –

Now this is all well and good, but the truth of the matter is that this attack was about as unsophisticated as they come. I like the solution, but I have little doubt griefers will get more creative; there’s nothing stopping someone from creating a number of strategically-placed “timebombs”. What was really needed was more drastic action, and it appears to have finally come. From an announcement today by Ginsu Linden over on the Second Life forum:

In the last month there have been several attacks in which users of Second Life have intentionally released objects or taken actions intended to disrupt activity in the Second Life grid. These attacks result in substantial real-world economic harm, and Linden Lab intends to protect its interests using all legal means.

Although most people using Second Life are enjoying the fun and creativity that the platform provides, a few malicious individuals are intentionally acting to impair some or all of the Second Life grid. Please note that personal and account information of these individuals will be disclosed to appropriate law enforcement agencies for further investigation, including U.S. state and federal authorities and agencies in applicable international jurisdictions.

Now things are getting interesting. Let’s see how this pans out. This may be just the sort of protective action that convinces real world companies to poke their toes in the virtual water.