I happened across a link on CGTalk that took me to a machinima for Unreal Tournament 2007 (Link). Of course there’s been quite a lot of talk about Epic’s game engine(s) over the past year or so (you might recall my previous comment about it – reLink), so I had to take a look for myself.

I’ll confess that it’s not quite as nice as I’d hoped. The technology demos looked more impressive to me. However, that may be because I find the game design itself repetitious. All that computing power just to make another capture the flag. Once I get past that, I start thinking about what I always think about: convergence. To that end, let me show a couple screens and post links to some things that come to mind when I see what a videogame can now do.
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I’ll confess to not understanding how so many Industrial Designers can be blinded to the potentials of this technology. I don’t hear anyone discussing this stuff in the design community. I recently asked the designers on Core77 if any of them did any game design… y’know, for fun. Not a single positive response. Now that’s unreal.

{Images source: Epic Games‘ video}

There’s an essay written by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang over on Samsung’s DigitAll Magazine called “Raising the Floor” (Link) that’s worth reading for those who regularly visit here. It’s mostly about the future of manufacturing. I’ve just read it. It’s well-written. But if you’ve followed my posts on this blog – like the “rocket launcher” (reLink) or the “smiley face” entry (reLink) – you’re probably familiar with or already have a sense of the possibilities about which he writes. I’ll pull out a few pieces and elaborate.

These capabilities will also give manufacturers the chance to learn more about how their products are used. In some cases, networked products will report back to manufacturers throughout their lives; in others, products will keep digital diaries that companies can recover in eco-friendly takeback programs.

This one is simple. A kirkyan is, for me, a special circumstance of just this scenario which Pang paints for his readers (for more on kirkyans try these links: reLink1, reLink 2, ISHUSH). I’m not especially interested in Big Corporate processes; I’m interested in the Individual. In Democratization (Note: my anti-piracy rants aren’t for the benefit of greedy corporations; they’re for a future of independents). Consequently I don’t recall previously posting how a kirkyan fits into their future systems (at least not on this blog). Personally, I’d rather not see that happen because it’ll be a privacy nightmare imo. But I expect it will.
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As a fan of retro science fiction movies (including… yes… Flesh Gordon), this puppy gets a big smile out of me. The above image is the ManMelter 3600ZX, one of several “rayguns” apparently in development as part of a line of a WETA Raygun Collection (Link). I’ve not found a price or any other shipping information, so I’m guessing these are limited edition niche products. I bet they sell out of these in a day.

If the Long Tail increasingly fills with this kind of stuff, I myself may actually turn into a normal consumer. Maybe. But with so much neat stuff – like the found art pieces I mentioned some time back (reLink) – I’d have a tough time deciding what to get and shut down altogether. There ya go, another reason we’ll need Filters more than Distributors in the years ahead.

via Boing Boing

{Image source: WetaNZ}

I was lucky enough to catch an interesting post discussing Second Life that is, in my opinion, accurate in quite a lot of unfortunate ways. It’s called “Second Life: The Failed Experiment” (Link) and is worth a read.

Without doubt, to me SL is not what the 3D internet will eventually become; it’s a precursor of sorts. A testing ground. And perhaps a bit of an experiment in how it might evolve and how we learn to interact through it. Of course sometimes what we learn says less about what we’re observing and more about the vantage point from where it is we’re making our observations. The world moves more quickly when you’re looking out the window of a train.

It’s long, but if you manage to read through it, you’ll also find my comment at the bottom which sees things through a different lens; a different train. That doesn’t change the observations, but it does change the interpretation.

It’s nice having the Interactive Architecture blog back up and running. Some of the most interesting stuff seems to be happening in the space between architecture and robotics and I can always find something curious posted there on the topic. On one end of the spectrum we get wild stuff like interactive, morphable architecture (see earlier posts – reLink) and on the other end we get stuff like the above, a robotic art installation piece by Bill Vorn which InterArch brings to everyone’s attention (Link). Cool stuff. I need to find time to take a good long tour of Vorn’s website if for no other reason than the excellent images.

{Image Copyright © 2006 Bill Vorn}