Exciting Times, Convergence and The Great Technology Waterfall

Well; these are exciting times. In the last three weeks I've been glued to my technology blogs; and the underlying theme on Convergence is one which is plain to see.

First up was some great work from adrien.noterdaem (don't be put off by the page turn effect on his site!), who has used papervision, a globe camera, and some techno-creative wizardry to present us with a 360degree interactive video.

Here's a quick youtube screengrab, but I recommend you try it out for yourself.



Next came the amazing 2nd life hybrid space project, posted below.



And now you can have your own live interweb TV station, as brought to you by the nice guys over at Mogulus. This allows you to mix pre-recorded videos with multiple live feeds. You can also add graphics and overlay audio tracks at run time... and what's great is the service is free! Could this be the ultimate narcissistic exercise? I'm quite sure myself that it'll spawn a whole new wave of rubbish content, badly executed live events and recycled projects masquerading as "the real thing". Hence I would exercise a note of caution to anybody wanting to broadcast just for the novelty value; but I doubt anybody will listen to me.

What's really exciting for me about all these things is that they are great examples of convergence. The Great technology waterfall; where we start in the reservoir of the Military, before going downstream to University land before hitting the world of Pornography then into the world of the Populous. The Military usually develop the hardware, 360degree cameras, mobile communication stations etcetera. Then the Universities get involved and develop software; such toys as iptv, distributed location independent databases and browser plugins. Then comes the great content vacuum; lots of stuff, new channels, but no message to broadcast. It is nearly always the Porn industry who are the first to hook up these bits of technology and software in order to present us with download, live broadcasts and virtual simulations of X rated content in order to satisfy the lust which is hard-wired into human nature. Eventually these developed systems disseminate into the wider realm and while multinational co-operations will always develop ways to charge you for these services; the great converging brains out there on the web will also work together to bring you the service for free. That's the part I love.


Also check out Earthmine - GPS/Google Map/ Photo mashup - still in it's early stages but looking like it'll cause quite a stir.



What we have in with these first noteworthy projects of 2008 is the coming together of technology, ideas and innovation. It is still early days, but the potential here is very exciting stuff for all. The old divisions between 'Creatives', and 'Tech-heads' are breaking down; with the key players of the now being creative-techologiests, strategic-producers and techno-planners.

Ooh it's going to be an exciting year...