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Tag Archive for future

The Return to Delicacy

May 18, 2015 future, Writing Comments Off on The Return to Delicacy

http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/18/bocusini-will-3d-print-your-food-like-a-fine-robotic-pastry-chef/?ncid=rss

There needs to be a place for whimsy, even in our food.  It would be an easy thing to reduce all of our nutritional needs to a foil-pack of slightly gluey nutrients (in-fact, Soylent has done just that).  But for many people now, and in the future, there is a connection with the physicality of food that satisfies almost as much as the contents of the food itself.

Will this kind of delicate confectionery construction take over your supermarket shelves?  Will everything we consume be reduced to frippery?  Just like some people like their sandwich meat thin sliced and others thick, the 3d printed food will be a delight to a portion of the market, and a pain-in-the-ass to the rest.

 

 

Old Dinosaur, New Tricks

May 2, 2015 future Comments Off on Old Dinosaur, New Tricks

http://gizmodo.com/its-microsoft-build-day-2-live-streaming-hot-1701224950

What the h*ll, Microsoft!

After dancing the dance of the dinosaur’s graveyard for decades now, you give us this.  The HoloLens.

There are a metric *ss-load of VR devices and Apps in the works right now.  Everyone is hunting the killer app (I think VR App companies outnumber hardware companies by, like, 20 to 1).  Everyone is hunting the one cool thing that will finally make VR and AR mainstream products.

Microsoft may have done just that.

The key difference in what Microsoft is pitching is not the one coolest game you’ll ever play (like Magic Leap’s video) or the ultra-minimal camera on ur face (the public perception of Google’s Glass).  Instead they are showing us an integrated world.  They are pitching a lifestyle, one limited to inside your home to be sure, but a functioning, useful product that integrates your screens with your life.  You have the option of attaching stuff to your walls, to having apps and objects appear and disappear in-situ, rather than carrying them with you all the time.

And I think this is the big perceptual difference.  Having VR elements situationally popping into and out of existence requires a kind of constant mental engagement.  It makes you want to put the headset down and go to the kitchen for a soda, just to get a break from all the micro-attentions.  But by having those apps and objects stay static, have them fully integrate with the environment around you, like actual physical objects, you give the user the ability to walk away at any time, then come back to find everything where they left it.  It allows the VR to be a part of your life, rather than a novelty item.

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