Flagons Den

I have finally finished my dissertation; A Roadmap For Our Digital Future.

Abstract

“We are in the middle of a quiet revolution that affects all our lives…” (Carter, 2009)

Faced with the exponential growth of computer processing power and the prevalence of digital technology in society – the pertinent question is what may society’s digital future hold in store? According to the media, scholars, futurists and science fiction writers the digital revolution will lead us towards two possible destinations; utopia or dystopia.

The optimists foresee a globally connected world of wirelessly communicating smart objects with conventional geographical nations and borders replaced by online information networks and an end to hunger and disease. The pessimists foresee an irrevocably mutated ecosystem and humans enslaved by the ruthless heuristic functions of artificial intelligence in a totalitarian Brave New World.

The aim of this essay is to undertake a deeper examination of the effect of technology’s progress on society, in order to create a more reasoned basis for any predictions about the future. I will investigate the key determinants of technological progress: the research and development of the military, the influence of commerce and the checks and balances of ethics. This aims to uncover any correlation between the digital age and the preceding era of analogue technology. To try to discern whether the emerging digital age can be described as a societal revolution I will also take into account the historical precedent of the industrial revolution through to the present day as a comparison.

The essay also provides an overview of current digital technology, exploring the developments in online technologies such as IPv6, cyborg experimentation, biotechnology, RFID, artificial intelligence and autonomous robotics. From this I can show the basis of the predictions of both the optimistic technophiles and the pessimistic technophobes.

As individuals, the perceived future of the information age suggests a significantly more pervasive and integrated connection with digital technologies, therefore a basic roadmap may provide the minimum of information required to take our first steps with some measured forethought.

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Download the PDF below:

A Roadmap for Our Digital Future

Memory Stream is an interactive gallery of memories, comprised of deconstructed portions of time captured with a head mounted timelapse camera to detail my simultaneous movement through the 3 dimensions of space and through the 4th dimension - time.

I wore the camera in different scenarios and captured the footage over the course of a four months, to obtain a variety of imagery. Some memories were captured with a longer gap between images and so are shorter on playback, this adds to the feeling of compressed time. Some were taken at ten second intervals to create a longer more detailed account of my movements, but still retain the disjointed and deconstructed version of my memories.

I had no idea what the images were going to look like until I downloaded them, very much like an old film camera, but I hoped they would be able to depict the passage of time in a way that would be dechipherable. Not all the memories were captured - which was disappointing - but which also served a salient lesson about the arbitrary nature of the camera and of the recall of memory. After long periods of wearing the camera I began to “forget to remember” as I wanted to see what the camera had stored instead. Therefore the camera became a digital prosthetic memory, augmenting my own by capturing images to illustrate moments that I wasn’t even aware of at the time - for example the capturing of movement.

“New technology from participating vendors successfully demonstrated interoperability with standards-based IP networks and Internet test servers, including testing four different wireless physical layer and media access communication protocols. Results established how well IP delivers global scalability and seamless interoperability when connecting embedded smart objects to the Internet.”
Ipso Press release

Showing the interoperability at this early a stage in the development in smart objects is a clarion call to the advent of spime technology and IPv6. Obviously the current tests are for new sensor enabled objects but the dawn of intercommunicating real world objects is upon us - and my idea of creating an IP address for tagged objects seems just as relevant. The missing factor is the communication between the objects - but as the focus is on a folksonomic, bottom up archive then the connections and associations are to be made by people in response to their objects - adding links to other similar objects in archives/collections to create folksonomic metadata regarding the semantics of each object and it’s personal provenance and subjective mnemonics.

I have finally finished, and the file is online…

The only slight problem is that some of the swf’s being called in are huge, one is 20 MB which means they run pretty slowly for the first cycle at least and then loop at high speed. I reduced the size of the images and lowered the resolution, but I didn’t want to compromise the quality too much. SO it will have to exist as an offline entity to work exactly as preferred, but I could accept a drop in quality for an online version. I also dropped the non catcam footage completely to ensure it all sat within the same aesthetic premis and I think it works better for it.

The file is here…memoryStream

I have added all the functionality - ironed out the odd bug, added some sounds - the computer voice from the video simulation  - and have a finished swf.  I have to show it to Mike first before I draw the proverbial line under it - he may not like it.  But to be honest I can’t do much more with it.  Some of the memory swf’s are pretty short, depending on how long I set the timer between shots on the catcam.  Some of them are 500 - 700 frames whereas others are just 15. But each one is a distinct memory so I think they work and provide a good contrast between each other. I am going to leave alone for a while anyway - I must have seen each stream about 50 times.

Right I’m off for a coffee.

I haven’t been up this late for a while - at least not working. I have completely rebuilt the Flash for the memory stream, I had to scrap the idea of a 3D interface completely - I need to get this finished.
Heres how it is looking so far…

Screenshot of Memory Stream

And heres when a stream is playing…

Screenshot of streaming timelapse

I have added some nice fades and transitions to make it look a bit slicker so although there is no 3D, it still is fairly plush. I have spent hours in Photoshop image processing to resize all the catcam pictures in order to remake all the .fla files so the swf’s can be called in at the right size and with added “blips” etc. But I think I will finish it off tomorrow - I am starting to see things as if the world is in timelapse now.

Illustration of the 3D Curve Wall

I have perservered with the free 3D Curve wallfrom flashmo.com in an attempt to recreate a similar interface to my simulation but no joy. The thumbnails either overlap or try to exist in the same space and flick between each other - which looks rubbish. I have to admit that me tinkering with the actionscript trying to tweak out these issues is only making it worse. So it’s time to dust off my flash skills and build this sucker from scratch.

This could be a long night….

Well I had my meeting with Mike and showed him the fruits of my labours - a short video as previously described detailing the online envisaged library of accessible memories.  I had been up till silly O’clock the past two days finishing it - I’m still a bit of an After Effects noob and iMovie is a bit limiting so to make it slick took some ingenuity.

Unfortunately, he didn’t like it. Well, he sort of liked it but he thought the artifice of the interface, with the fake selections and 3D camera movement was unnecessary - which was a bit gutting as I thought I had created a simulacra of the environment in which these memories could be played out - and it had taken fricking ages. So now it is down to me to create a real selection interface in Flash so users can choose each memory as they wish.

I have looked at 3D wall galleries - using papervision 3D - but most of them are commercial products costing about $90. Hmmm.

I have been experimenting with the catcam - a lot. I have been trying to capture the passage of time using it’s timelapse abilities whilst driving, walking the dog, gigging, rehearsing with the band, doing stuff round the house etc. Now I have a wealth of data - and I don’t know what to do with it.  My latest and probably most workable idea is the simulated “memory bank” idea. A piece of software which enables you to upload and download memories via BCI. I envisage it being a sort of social networking flickr type scenario, where you and other users can download datastreams of memories of events - either banal or exciting. Like a trip over the Torpoint Ferry for example.

It will look like the piclens software addon to firefox - a floating 3D gallery of keyframes each leading through to a memory stream.

Example of piclens interface

I am building it in After Effects and Flash and adding voiceover and some mocked up interaction - load bars etc. My exploration is with the idea of the movement through 3D space and capturing that with snippets of time to create a compressed narrative. A moving point perspective timelapse through each memory, and a commentary on the process of storing time and recollecting memory. Also the sharing of these memories of streamed “real memories”.

I have gone through the baptism of fire with the live demo in front of my peers, and I think it went pretty well. I had quite a bit of interest about the looptop and there was a lot of people testing it out.

Mr Fox Rocking the Looptop

I kept it short and sweet, but thinking back I could have done a small performance to show the potential.  Unfortunately the video of my demo corrupted so here’s some homemade videos showing the looptop in action.

There was one other person - Jav - who was using ReacTIVision and he managed to get a whole library of samples playing simultaneously which is an amendment I need to add to the Looptop. That would give a considerably better aural arsenal and improve the soundscapes. So keep a lookout for the beta version.