Future of interactive media technology

(In an effort to spare people from my e-mail onslaught, I'm blogging about this forward...)

Dan Hakimzadeh wrote:
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Subject: Behind the coffee table!

http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid271552687/bctid933742930

A computer with a screen built into a table that you can push around with both hands (looking at the video, not sure you can do it in a way natural to a novice yet), and that will react to and if possible communicate with objects you place on the table.

Awesome.

Agaric websites will work with this out of the box... somehow. Dan, if you make a browser that can flow content around stuff you put on the screen, and can deal with two or more "cursors" at once... you'd get to write your own replacement to CSS.

On the downside...

You are all aware that you just saw the future of context-sensitive advertising hell?

• Would you like a gazillion add-ons and services to go with your digital camera?
• Oh, there's a Ford key on the table, have you thought about getting a Porsche?
• Here's the movie adaptation of the book you have on the table, save yourself the mental energy and watch it... the product placements have been digitaly inserted in, with some products that will be swapped in special for you to match your preferences.

We're going to need a human right not to be advertised at when we don't want to be.

This is where open source free software is so important.

At least for computers we take into our own home, proprietary operating systems and software will increasingly build in simply evil sorts of information gathering and advertising. Do that with open source, and in five seconds someone will release the same software without the invasion of privacy, data mining, and annoyances.

The other thing about this technology... I don't want to to even go into the camera-in-the-screen similarities with Big Brother, but...

It's already bad.

Same point in video:

And a citizen test to confirm that police are watching everything, including aliens, by camera:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5202094259103602174

Most people don't know how much they're under surveillance, some people don't care, and hardly anyone seems to get that maybe even more important than this vast invasion of privacy is who gets to control all this information, but I suppose it's true we're buying into the whole culture...

It was Eric Blair AKA George Orwell who put together the screen you watch with a screen that could watch you...

So here's a clip from the movie 1984 that is, if I recall correctly, blatantly over the top compared to George Orwell's book in the illustration of groupthink-- but in 2007 in the United States, it actually helps point out how much government and media have conditioned people that "this man is bad, so therefore everything he says is bad and everything we associate with him is bad" even if truth were to get some screen time...

To make sure interactive media technology really is interactive (and furthers individual thought and human communication) and is not manipulative and controlling, one thing we need is open source free software.

So at least we aren't inviting a bunch of corporate Big Brothers into our home...