The Future is Getting Closer.

Like Photoshop, but running from a browser?

The nice people over at Aviary are developing a suit of browser run replacements for the disgusting monopolies that the likes of Adobe, Microsoft and Apple have over the creative applications market.

Aviary is a suit of web based applications that will allow creative professionals, and those who just like to play, access to powerful image, music and video manipulating tools. In English? It's like Photoshop but it ain't by Adobe init. It's like the Google Word Processor, for images. I'm very excited by all this.

Why am I excited by this?

For me this is NOT Web 3.0 (fuck buzzwords), but it is a refreshing conceptual step away from that awful mental model of the web as taught to us by the powers that be back in the late 90's.

Let's reiterate:

The internet is NOT something that we "Go Onto".
The Net is a set of interlinking routes of data - connections (like in your brain)
The Net is everywhere, all around us, every minute of every day.
The Net is wireless.

Therefore:

We View the Net through the rendering tools we choose (be this a desktop computer - rendering a big HTML page, or through a mobile phone (just showing me my text email).

The Net is MORE powerful than my desktop machine; therefore it makes sense that the net hosts my number crunching image manipulation programs. Physical Geography is no longer an obstacle.

The Net is smarter than I am, so why don't I work openly to it, collaboratively - as there's always other like minded people plugged in else where in the grid.

Wonderful Archigram

Ron Herron - Archigram, originally uploaded by donshades.

It could well be argued (and I know I'll have a go at some later stage), that conceptually the Archigram collective actually invented the interweb. Pictured here is Ron Herron's amazing concept for a "Walking city".

Brain Computer Interface pluggs up to 2nd Life

Stop Press I say! After a brief spell of jumping up and down in an excited manor you say: "Stop eating that acid, dave". now watch this:



But wait, it's true. This article on Pink Tentacle outlines a neuro-2nd life interface which allows the user to control the basic walk functions of their avatar. The research team from Keio University Biomedical Engineering Laboratory have developed a Brain-Computer Interface technology (BCI) which allows the user to transfer thoughts about movement into actual digital movement of their 2nd life character. The User wears a head piece which measures nuro-electrical activity in the motor cortex (the region of the brain involved in controlling the movement of the arms and legs). The BCI then interprets this crazy data and transfers it into signals which control your avatar. More detail here.



Amazing, yes; but I'm more interested in the potential to grow this technology. Touch Screen? No - Think Screen. Just stop for a minute and start to imagine the possibilities of controlling computers with our thoughts. Very quickly the mind boggles (well, mine does but maybe that is down to the acid); as the potential spirals out of prediction.

Now think of what we are doing in digital - the things that we are all talking about, getting excited about and wetting ourselves over. What of this problem of being swamped in data? How do we know where to search? etcetera. Now attack the same problems with some sort of crazy BCI thingey at the helm, steering our computer interactions. Our brain: able to deal with many concurrent thought processes at speeds intel can only dream of. Take out the clumsy mouse running off the mouse-matt, or clunky keyboard shenanigans.

And what of our digital marketing model? Well for me this is yet another nail in the coffin for banner ads, mpu's and other digisexed up oldworld advertising mediums which have bumped along with us so far as our industry has struggled to keep up with the kind of thinking that will guide it from infancy to adolescence.



And who do I think will be the early adopters for this neuro BCI technical stuff? Why the porn merchants of course. Take a walk down any back alley in 2nd Life; cower away from the light given off by over-branded cooperate worlds such as the Vodafone inside out island and you find an abundance of sexual adventure, role play and people prepared to explore the darker side of their sexual psyche through the clinically safe digital projection of their inner lust. Imagine a 2nd life blowjob which fires orgasm-inspiring neuro electronic transmitters in our brains to give that ultimate after work dopamine hit. Think of your long distance relationship, enabled by a full duples BCI, transmitting the gentle touch of your partner from the other side of the world, straight into the relevant receptors in your brain.

Then imagine the premium which will come with real experience.

Googlisation Cometh!

Interesting news today regarding Google's aquisition of Grand Central telecom. It seems that Google now want to own the network as well as provide the services. The snap above comes from this article on the notion of Googalisation.