Out of the limelight (Original from 2006)

Editor's Notes

• #2: TODO: Major headings in blue Into the starlight. “ Out of the limelight”, used to be a euphemism for “out of fashion” or unpopular. Now, limelight is a technology no more than a historic foot note, like wax calendars, or crystal sets. Yet these archaic technologies where revolutionary in their day, and they changed not only how we as humans entertained ourselves, but they also changed how the stories that define who a society is, and maintained their fabric.
• #3: Before Electricity, A Scottish engineer burned a chunk of natural (limestone) in a heli-ox mixture to produce an intense light. The Scottish engineer Drummond invented the limelight in 1816. He used a core of limestone (calcium) that was heated to incandescence by a burning mixture of oxygen and hydrogen. The incandescent limestone provided very brilliant light that could be directed and focused. The limelight was first employed in the theatre in 1855 and became widely used by the 1860s. Its intensity made it useful for spotlighting and for the realistic simulation of effects such as sunlight and moonlight. It could also be used for general stage illumination. The greatest disadvantage of the limelight was that it required constant attention of an individual operator, who had to keep adjusting the block of limestone as it burned and to tend to the gas that fuelled it. 1879, James A. Jenney of Michigan developed the first foolproof, economical arc light, Electric light’s influence extended from experimental use in the Paris opera house to Images used with permission of the Compulite-danor museum, Isreal
• #4: he radio is a Sparton #506 or "Bluebird“, introduced in 1936. It came in blue or peach mirror with chrome. It is very deco and can be found in many books on deco styling. The inventions that allow us to control electricity, and turn it into light and mechanical energy are interesting, but it is the combination of these inventions and how they are used that has truly brought about revolutions Radio, was the first media invention, since high volume news print, to allow economical information and entertainment to reach the general population. Raido truly instigated social change, viewed by many as positive, but also viewed by some as a “tool to corrupt our youth”. With The Electric arc light to power projectors, and motion picture cameras to capture moving images, the medium of Moving pictures took off, allowing for any story to be told to millions of people for the first time in history. Cinema, allowed people to escape into lavish worlds in ways that Radio never could. Also Cinema was a social experience, many have likened cinema to the modern age’s version of the tribe gathering around a campfire to listen to stories Then with the invention of practical Television, an Audio Visual experience began to displace Radio in the home as the primary means of information and entertainment Then with the invention of a relatively inexpensive system that could play video tapes, the same freedom of access the music industry had enjoyed for nearly a century came to Cinema, and television content Remember the 8 track tape? I’m sorry for you. The Audio CD was not in itself a revolution, but a successful evolution Remember LDs? Video Records? It seems the movie industry had more failed format attempts than the music industry. DVDs Finally did for the movie industry what CDs did for the Music industry Oh, I love my Tivo. Tivo is driving a social evolution. Family units are now in control of when they watch what they want to watch. Air times no longer control when people watch. I have 2 tivos, and a Raido Shark
• #5: The British rock band “the Gorillas” persona is a completely animated one. And their debuit album sold over 1 million albums. Did this happen last week or last month? No, this happened in 2001!! Also in early 2001 noted Indiana University economist Edward Castronova performs a detailed economic analysis of Norrath, the name of the virtual world in the game Everquest. At the time the Everquest currency was trading at 0.0107 to the per us dollar, which at that time was higher than the Yen and the Lira. Castronova, Edward, "Virtual Worlds: A First-Hand Account of Market and Society on the Cyberian Frontier" (December 2001). CESifo Working Paper Series No. 618. Available at SSRN: http:// ssrn.com /abstract=294828 Even after the release of Lord of the Rings, many critics where claiming that CGI movie characters would never create an audience bond like an experienced human actor. As if taking these comments as personal critisim, peter Jackson directed a film, who’s lead character a huge virtual gorilla, brought audiences to tears in the 2005 blockbuster “King Kong”. Today the market of people playing the World of Warcraft game in Europe is larger than, some analysts predicted the size of the entire market. We are also finding
• #8: Take this one to the next level, what does this concurrence mean to the business? Not a biz show Hm… lost you here, not sure what creations we’re talking, silicon here is new to me Displays are not only getting larger, but they are getting faster, many studies have show the immersive quality of content greatly increases with frame rate. New CPUs are being designed specifically for rich media. New CPUs such as those designed by IBM for the next generation game consoles are specifically architected to provide a superior game play experience by providing much more computational capacity All commodity cpu systems are moving to a “Multi Core” architecture, where one bit of silicon can finally physically do more than one thing at a time. These advances in CPUs do not just advance the impact on the consumer of content, but they have a much larger potential to benefit the creators of content. Higher capacity computing systems allow the creation of more detailed images, as well as more realistic environments, such as realistic real-time hair and cloth simulation, real-time ridged AND dynamic body dynamic modeling. It’s not just CPUs that are improving, but density of disk drives is improving, allowing for more and larger objects to be stored. The capacity of networks is increasing allowing larger teams to work together more effectively How fun play Gutar Hero without the gutar? Or Dance Dance Revolution without the pad? Every play Donky Konga, on the bongos? Or have you ever experienced the Smell of a back ally? Or felt the stomps of an oncoming TREX in your chair, not just your in your controller. How about lighting, and walls that change color schemes and patterns that are context sensitive and change based on your activities, and time of day?
• #10: [this might be a good place to plug what EU is doing, Marcel has been pretty involved] [innovative ties to better, not to cheaper, so what is the cheaper message we can squeeze out of this one?] Increse in unit volumes allow for innovation: Examples Playstation Portable, Nintendo DS Launching concurrently in multiple geographies spreads risk, and reduces time to value, or the time to recoup return on investment. As electronic manufacturing costs continue to decrease, Innovation beyond the mainstream becomes viable, innovation drives demand, demand drives volume, volume allows for cost reduction Faster computers not only allow content to be created quicker, and therefore for smaller budgets, but also faster computers allow you to create BETTER more Detailed, Realistic, Deeper content in the same amount of time for the same budjet
• #11: So Finally this is the part of the presentation where things really start to get interesting…. We have seen the history of “stuff”. And we have seen the history of what revolutions “stuff” can generate Now we have seen the “stuff” that is coming, let’s look at some of the revolutions of what is coming. Will your car simply become one big server on wheels? Rather than remaining relatively simple mechanical machines, vehicles of all types are increasingly complex mobile information technology devices Advanced technology will fundamentally change the relationships between drives, passengers, manufacturers and third-party service providers Advances in in-vehicle services and applications will be accelerated by the adoption of common development platforms will accelerate The new Airbus 380 contains more than one billion lines of code GM predicts the average car will have 100 million lines of code by 2010; Windows XP, by comparison, has about 40 million lines of code. Reliability and security of these new “mobile IT devices” is an area of huge concern—and opportunity
• #12: The promice is no longer “interact with anyONE” the primice is now “Interact with EVERYONE” Mobile phone ubiquity allowing multipule forms of interactivity, now as primitive as early radio.. Since I mentioned raido, If you are still awake, You may have been wondering. Ok Raido introduced a huge set of social changes, and was a huge revolution but ever since then Everything else has been evolutionary in comparason. Was raido the last true revolution in communications? No. All technologies we have talked about to this point have been Unidirectional, Push. One to many…. Online Games, Truly bi-directional Many to Many Online Entertainment will be our next revolution. The web as it stands today, for the most part, is still one to many, but that was not it’s design goal. The original design goal of all fundamental web technologies was to allow ANYONE to create content and allow EVERYONE to see that content. But that has been a limitation so far. It’s getting Easier. Wikipedia was recently described as a huge game, and the object of the game is: truth. Who ever thought an Encyclopedia would be entertainment Will there be another
• #13: Social Translucense, or making our doorways and pathways clear to others. Social Translucense refers to making Specific location and temporal information available publiclly, so that others, and applications may utilize that info for the benefit of the individual and the experience (say, having a in game weather react to the weather in your local area) http://www.research.ibm.com/SocialComputing/SCGFAQs.htm Q: What is social translucence? A: In short, social translucence is the idea that we should make some (but not all) cues about the presence and activity of users of digital systems available to one another. We like to use a story to illustrate the idea. In the building where we work there is a door that opens from the stairwell into the hallway. This door has a design flaw: opened quickly, it will slam into anyone entering fromthe other side. In an attempt at a remedy, a sign was posted: "Open Door Slowly." As you might guess, the sign is not very effective -- people soon cease to notice it. We like to contrast the 'sign' approach with a different sort of solution: putting a glass window in the door. The 'glass window' approach is effective for three reasons: First, as humans, we are perceptually attuned to movement and human faces and notice them more readily than we notice a sign. Second, once we become aware that a person is present, our social rules come into play: I don't open the door quickly because I know that you're on the other side, and I've been raised in a culture that frowns upon slamming things into others. There is a third, subtler reason for the glass window's effectiveness. Even if I haven't been properly acculturated and don't care about harming you, nevertheless, I may still refrain from slamming into you because I know that you know that I know you're there, and therefore I will be held accountable for my actions. We call systems of this sort -- systems in which perceptual cues about the activities of their users lead to feelings of awareness and accountability -- socially translucence systems. Q: Isn't 'social translucence' just a fancy name for taking away people's privacy? A: No. That's why we use the word "translucence" -- it stands for striking a balance between privacy and visibility. Consider, as an example, how elections work. In the physical world, it is important that some aspects of elections be very private (e.g. who the voter is voting for), but it is equally crucial that some parts of the process be very visible and public (e.g. the placing of the ballot in the ballet box; the counting of the votes; and, more subtly, it should be visible that the voter is *alone* in the voting booth). For elections to be seen as valid, it is crucial that some parts be private, and other parts public. We suggest this is true of most collective processes, and a fundamental aspect of our research is to understand how to negotiate these tradeoffs in digital systems.