A day made of glass

[The_Ghan]

Some of you may have seen these, but for those of you who haven't, you're in for a treat:

 

 

 

 

Enjoy

 

Cheers

 

The_Ghan

[ToniBabelony]

Nice an all, but who's gonna clean all those sheets of glass? I presume in the (near) future people will still have greasy fingers.

[cteno4]

well folks having this will have the $$ for house cleaners/keepers to do all that!

 

dont think i need to be sending texts while washing my face or watch tv on the counter while cooking -- digital life is invading enough. i mean its all about the glitz and not about substance or content. i love it how the tech futurists keep pushing it into our lives. its really not that its so much needed or desired by people as its needed by the tech economy that needs to keep moving at such a rapid pace to not collapse in on itself!

 

the thing all these things miss is the human in the equation. they all scream to the conscious mind but totally miss the intuitive/human/subconscious part of the user. I have a feeling that at some point the human part is going to come screaming back. I see it all the time in the exhibit stuff i do and watch. whenever we touch the intuitive/human part we get a huge outpouring of the visitor's attention, respect, admiration, and conscious mind, but when the conscious mind is targeted with the fire hoses bells and whistles of most modern age stuff i just watch folks tend to shut down, disengage, and the time given to any particular thing diminish to practically nothing and especially not near enough to have any real impact on the viewer. McLuhan had it right...

 

jeff (sounding like the neo-luddite!)

[The_Ghan]

Watch the videos again ... there ain't a single stone to be seen ...     

 

Cheers

 

The_Ghan

[cteno4]

and no sopranos!

 

jeff

[traindork]

What they fail to mention is that every time you use one of those screens, you'll get a popup asking you to take a short survey about your experience.

 

I'll pass. I already spend 15 minutes a day wiping the fingerprints off of my cell phone and MP3 player.

[mwsteele]

My cell phone has corning gorilla glass on it. I never wipe it, no case or screen protector on it. Looks brand new, and I've had it for 4 months.

[westfalen]

I can remember the day when we didn't even have mobile phones, now in the 'near future' we'll be able to check our emails in the mirror while we're brushing our teeth. ??? I pity the people like those in the video who feel they have to be able to be contacted every waking moment of every day. There's some good stuff there but you have to feel that some of the effort could be put to more useful purposes.

 

Something that occured to me watching this is that technology is not only catching up with science fiction, it's overtaking it. I watched a couple of Star Trek Voyager episodes the other night and some of the 24th century stuff they were using looked positively old fashioned.

[cteno4]

not to mention that most appliances now with digital interfaces folks are finding that the electronics are blowing out before the mechanics. with electronics pacing way faster than mechanics good luck finding the board replacement in 5 or 10 years down the road...

 

but where are our flying cars and jet packs we are all using to go to the store and work!

 

many of the writers on star trek admitted the communicator was far far short changed as they needed the descriptive dialog and scene separation to make the scripts work right and having full video feeds would have made a mess of the scripts... we got the first pass at doing the science of star trek cdrom years ago and it was a headache trying to deal with all sort of issues like this! im glad the cost of the license was way to high and we ended up passing even as it would have been cool doing something star trek -- being a original trekie!

 

jeff

[Mudkip Orange]

I have no idea why anyone would want to drive all the way out into the redwoods and then look through a pane of glass that has the logo and the name of the park superimposed on it.

 

I mean, you go out there to get *away* from technology. It actually makes me kind of sad to be in the middle of the desert and still have cell reception.

[cteno4]

my eternal battle with most clients, when, where and how much technology should be in exhibits...

 

the big battle now is cell phones. everyone is rushing to have their museum wified and apped. there are a few little things that you can deliver with them. but the drawbacks are pretty big and if you bring those up you are really, really looked down on. its all a race with the other institutions, not what is good for the visitor and what they want to do. its bad enough with audio tours when you have a room full of people totally and absolutely ignoring each other's presence and reactions to the exhibit, now we want them looking at the little screen as well as listening instead of looking / interacting with the exhibit!

 

many want the whole exhibit to become games and social media pieces. again this rips the heart out of the exhibit itself. why do the exhibit then, just post some stuff on social media and setup some games. it really is a huge joke. everyone now says that you cant connect with a visitor w/o this stuff. total bs, the basic human part of the visitor has not changed and wont. if anything that part of the human heart is being ignored by modern culture/tech/social media and is screaming for attention. any time we touch it its almost like an explosion these days and actually makes your job easier if you use it to your advantage! i have to now just not say a word on the matter as folks are getting really entrenched spending lots of money on this stuff and its not showing any pay off so folks are getting really touchy.

 

i have exhibits going for over 20 years now that are technology based, but were built around the presenter and the visitor experience, not the technology (tried the best to hide it and only give a peak behind the curtain as a little wow afterwards) and its still the top piece in visitor information retention and change of mind (meaning you made them think) and enjoyment  even as the rest of the stuff around it has gotten really high tech and high high price tag.

 

jeff

[The_Ghan]

Another issue is privacy.  With all that technology in glass there is bound to be a suite of webcams monitoring feedback.  The question is, who is watching those webcams and how does one control it?

 

My Samsung TV has a webcam which we frequently use for skyping.  However, the webcam is always on.  Is Samsung watching me?  If so, they caught me ironing in my underwear a week or two ago!!!

 

Cheers

 

The_Ghan

[cteno4]

we have all been watching the ghan show and loving it! folks loved how you folded your undies in threes and then pressed them again, quite nice. the little black bar was a bit distracting when you were doing it in the buff the other week though...

 

seriously your cell phones, ipads, itouchs, etc all have the cams in them always looking and listening and usually taken with you all over the place! someone im sure is selling idots that you can stick over your camera lenses on your mobile stuff to block out those potential prying eyes when not used by the user.

 

im sure its only a matter of time (if its not already being done) that cell phones can be turned on remotely to transmit what they are hearing and seeing w/o the user knowing by those that spy...

 

jeff

[Nick_Burman]

Oh yes, remembered something... the cab partition on the ICE T and TD trains AFAIK is a large LCD screen. As long as the driver keeps the power on, you can see the cab through the screen; if the driver feel he/she needs privacy, she switches the power off and the screen goes dark, just like the film...

 

 

Cheers NB

[bikkuri bahn]

Oh yes, remembered something... the cab partition on the ICE T and TD trains AFAIK is a large LCD screen. As long as the driver keeps the power on, you can see the cab through the screen; if the driver feel he/she needs privacy, she switches the power off and the screen goes dark, just like the film...

 

 

Cheers NB

 

I hope that is not the future for all trains.  One of the joys of riding the train is to be able to look out the front, preferably through a huge window, like on the JR West 223 series.

[Nick_Burman]

Oh yes, remembered something... the cab partition on the ICE T and TD trains AFAIK is a large LCD screen. As long as the driver keeps the power on, you can see the cab through the screen; if the driver feel he/she needs privacy, she switches the power off and the screen goes dark, just like the film...

 

 

Cheers NB

 

I hope that is not the future for all trains.  One of the joys of riding the train is to be able to look out the front, preferably through a huge window, like on the JR West 223 series.

 

Which is not the case of the ICEs, their front windows are so small (crash worthiness oblige) that one can hardly see anything over the driver's shoulder. And at 300kph there wouldn't be much to see anyway...

 

Cheers NB

[The_Ghan]

Oh yes, remembered something... the cab partition on the ICE T and TD trains AFAIK is a large LCD screen. As long as the driver keeps the power on, you can see the cab through the screen; if the driver feel he/she needs privacy, she switches the power off and the screen goes dark, just like the film...

 

 

Cheers NB

 

This is the same technology employed in Zaphod Beeblebrox's sunglasses, except they're programmed to go dark at the first sign of danger........

 

Cheers

 

The_Ghan

[Mudkip Orange]

My Samsung TV has a webcam which we frequently use for skyping.  However, the webcam is always on.  Is Samsung watching me?  If so, they caught me ironing in my underwear a week or two ago!!!

My netbook has a piece of electrical tape over the built-in webcam. I've taken it off maybe four or five times for trolling people on meebo or chatroulette. Otherwise no one is watching.

 

Low tech is the best tech.

[cteno4]

aah but you did not figure on the electrical tape company supplying micro holes in their tape that the camera can see through. your paranoia does not run deep enough grasshopper... and they are still listening!

 

jeff

[The_Ghan]

My Samsung TV has a webcam which we frequently use for skyping.  However, the webcam is always on.  Is Samsung watching me?  If so, they caught me ironing in my underwear a week or two ago!!!

My netbook has a piece of electrical tape over the built-in webcam. I've taken it off maybe four or five times for trolling people on meebo or chatroulette. Otherwise no one is watching.

 

Low tech is the best tech.

 

Hmmm ... I might try the tape.  It would be funny if Samsung then contacted me to report that my webcam didn't work!

 

Cheers

 

The_Ghan

[scott]

It seems unfair that the forum software won't let me like posts in this thread.

 

Jeff -- the insistence on using the latest and greatest in every field -- government, education, etc., etc. -- is really sad. Not sure why being a dupe to the hype is counted as cutting-edge wisdom. Last year our school system was trying to fund buying a tablet computer for lots of kids -- I never did see reason why. Same thing in government, where I work. Want to get the word out about something? Let's create a brand and make a website! Why?

[The_Ghan]

Interesting point Scott,

 

Reminds me of Thailand's policy to give every first-grader a tablet PC.  The trouble is, both of my in-laws are elementary school teachers and they haven't been given any instruction or advice on how to integrate the technology into the classroom.  Classrooms in Thailand still use chalkboards.  At my in-laws school each class room is equipped with a single GPO by the teacher's desk.  There's no fan, no a/c, nowhere to recharge these things.  In rural Thailand, kids don't have shoes, their homes don't have power and classrooms don't even have fluro lighting.

 

While Corning has done a great job of romancing the technology, I for one, revere the private time I get in the bathroom.  My wife and I take a walk each weekend, deliberately leaving our technology at home: we take the house key and a bottle of water or $10 if we plan on stopping by a cafe.  One thing Corning fails to point out, for example, is the pile of bird carcasses that are sure to accumulate below those large sheets of glass installed out in the wilderness - resulting from bird strikes.

 

My aunt is 82, and very mobile and independent.  We were at her place for lunch the other week when she got to talking about her recent shopping trip: she took her iPad with the shopping list, her GPS so she could find her new orthopedic specialist in the main street, her iPod so that she could listen to her favourite talk-back station and, on the way, she texted some photos of her grandchildren to my mother.  I though "Holy cow! This woman is more up to date than me!"  But further questioning revealed: the iPad is actually the notepad and pencil kept by the phone, her GPS is a 1983 Gregory's Street Directory, the iPod is a transistor radio of an older vintage that broadcasts through her handbag, and the "text" was an A5 envelope containing a short letter and 3-4 photos.

 

My aunt had decided that, although the technology has changed, and there are new words like GPS and iPad, things are basically still the same.  She has applied the new terms to her old things.  I love it.

 

Cheers

 

The_Ghan

[cteno4]

Yes it's sooooo true.

 

I went back to my old high school and taught multimedia for a year. My old science teachers had set up an oceanography academy within the school and had a large tech grant for lots of computers. I had helped them write the grants the start the tech planning and buying and then helped hire the first tech instructor. He turned out to be a total turkey so I went in for a year.

 

Turned out half the job really needed to be working with the tech savvy teachers to help them seLect the proper bits to do with technology then design the proper assignment. After that the kids practically taught themselves with guidance and some targeted workshops, not traditional class work etc. kids loved it, teachers loved it and the quality and depth of the learning was much greater. The average kid was doing equivalent quality work of the top 10%from the year before and it was so clear to see that almost all of them got it.

 

Teachers were so shocked when I actually turned several of the tech things they were doing back into more traditional ways without much or any tech, but I was keen on using the best tool for each thing rather than just throw tech at everything. A few of the really tech savvy ones resisted a bit, but soon saw the light when of some our very tech heavy students did some amazing non tech projects and had a blast at it.

 

Cheers

 

Jeff

 

Ps live the bird strike note. Got a vision of a 5 point buck bounding thru the forest only to crash into one of the screens!

[scott]

In a couple of decades, those commercials are going to seem as hilarious as all those promo films from the World's Fairs in the '50s.

 

OTOH, that park-trip commercial is pretty depressing, if that's what people think they need to do to get kids interested in the outdoors. 3D dinosaur graphics?!? What about the little living dinosaur descendants on that tree over there? "What did you see at the park today, dear?" "Well, we saw a dinosaur video, and a 3D animated dinosaur roared at us, and a ranger hologram talked to us about the bad old days when they had to *pay* for rangers!"

 

...and who's supposed to create all the fancy content for people to stare at on these screens, anyway? And can girls really not pick out the clothes in their closets without computer-simulating them first? And who provided the 3D scans of their old sneakers?

 

Ahhh, never mind. If I keep thinking about this, it'll make me nuts.

[cteno4]

...and who's supposed to create all the fancy content for people to stare at on these screens, anyway? And can girls really not pick out the clothes in their closets without computer-simulating them first? And who provided the 3D scans of their old sneakers?

 

Ahhh, never mind. If I keep thinking about this, it'll make me nuts.

 

Very good point Scott! My mantra in the exhibit/education business is "it's the content, stupid!"

 

Good content costs lots and lots and is hard to create, but folks think its cheap and easy to do. Also unless the content is selling something then you won't find folks shelling out top dollar to produce it. Marketing and business content pays 3x generally than education, training stuff about 2x...

 

I gave a talk to all the execs from all the baby bells years ago about educational content development back at the dawn of the Internet. They were salivating over selling educational content into the home. When they started to hear the costs they really flinched. Then I had them total up the total amount they personally spent on family educational stuff (outside tuition) and the amount was pretty pathetic. Then is asked if it was safe to assume the minimum salary in the room was seven figure and all nodded yes, then I asked how much the average family on $50k would cough up -- lots o wide eyes in the room. I had figured someone there sort of knew what they were getting into before they asked me to come speak to them and just wanted cool Ed ideas. Was an interesting 3 days with them for the rest of the retreat when they started to realize they seriously needed to rethink thing! But I had great fun getting to see all the VIP demos of all the coolest new technologies in the works or being researched.

 

Jeff