Inventing the Future – Page 26

Brie Demos

Stearns February 18, 2006 February 24, 2013Brie, Inventing the Future

I gave a demo of Brie at the OOPSLA Croquet workshop in October, and Julian gave one a couple weeks ago at C5. Alas, no video, but the Brie papers are here and here.

This terrific video of the Alternate Reality Kit was made at Xerox PARC in 1987. So, of course, it’s not actually Brie, but it does give a lot of the feel of what we’re going for. There are a few UI differences and the ARK is only 2D, but the main thing is that Brie is synchronously collaborative, and therefore eminently shareable.

Another related thing (without a cool video) was PARC’s Thing Lab.

What the Dormouse Said

Stearns February 12, 2006 February 24, 2013history: external milestones and context, Inventing the Future

Everyone’s been waiting patiently for Hedgehog. There’s no way to know when the next step of David Reed’s Tea Time will be available. As David Smith and Andreas Raab began working on Simplified Tea Time for Hedgehog, there was no way to know when that process would produce results.

The Croquet group at the University of Wisconsin is not in the Computer Science department. We’re not driven by the theoretical concepts of Croquet for its own sake. We are in the Academic Technology department of the Division of Information Technology, and our interest is in building educational applications in Croquet. Adding stuff to the Croquet core is fun, but what we really need is to build learning environments with faculty. Last summer, we had the opportunity to just that, and we took it, even though we knew that the existing Jasmine proof-of-concept version of Croquet would not meet our needs. What to do?

Enter Hedgehog

Stearns February 12, 2006 February 24, 2013history: external milestones and context, Inventing the Future

The first real release of Croquet is nigh….

Touchability Cues

Stearns January 18, 2006 February 24, 2013Inventing the Future, metaphysics

When I wrote “Touchability,” it had already been a while since a buddy had shown me a haptic mouse he was working on. For example, you could feel an actual bump when the mouse enters and leaves an object (a real version of what developers sometimes call rollover). Force feedback was such an obviously good thing that I didn’t even mention then the cool stuff that’s now happening in this area.

As much as I think physical touchability is good, I want to be clear that I want to make Croquet applications be emotionally touchable, too. I want to capture what it is that makes things seem (be?) real. Even without physical force feedback, it should still be fun to fondle stuff because of active visual and aural responses and good 3D design.

To be sure, I’d love to add to the effect with more sensory stimulus. There are huge possibilities, and I hope folks will explore them. This stuff is cool. There’s someone working on stereo display for Croquet. Others working on large screens in public spaces. I don’t doubt that we’ll see Croquet on small or cheap devices. There’s plenty of room for innovation.

Sony Capitulates on One DRM Case

Stearns December 31, 2005 February 24, 2013General, Inventing the Future, Tales of the Sausage Factory

Good news. I’d be happier if there were a legal decision that established a precedent. But the settlement sounds good just the same.

Them's Fitin' Words, Craig

Stearns December 12, 2005 February 24, 2013General, Inventing the Future

When I first heard about the $100 laptop project, I didn’t get it. Sure, I saw the value in having one laptop per child worldwide – I’m not stupid or mean – but I didn’t see why it wouldn’t just happen on its own. Prices are falling all the time. To make this project happen, it didn’t require a world-class engineering team, it required a team of world-class shoppers, I thought. My mother-in-law should run this project. I even argued with Alan Kay about it, to the point where folks had to come take him away before I was able to understand why so much effort needed to be poured into this right now.

I was wrong, and Alan was absolutely right. (Big surprise, no?) I have been convinced by these dismissive remarks by Intel Chairman Craig Barret.

More links: UN, tech and good discussion, historical background, interview.

Collateral

Stearns December 9, 2005 February 24, 2013history: external milestones and context, Inventing the Future

It’s been heads-down hard work around here ever since OOPSLA in October. Haven’t even filed my expense report yet. (Coding is more fun.) So I’m pretty late in posting that…

Towards an Economic Understanding of…Ourselves?

Stearns December 3, 2005 February 24, 2013Inventing the Future, meta-medium

If the dominant medium of a culture defines it, what does it mean for us when TV is changing? How will it change, and how will that change us? A couple of MIT academics are discussing the former at here. Good reading, but missing the point.

Scalable Information Management by Information Interfaces and Peer Editing

Stearns November 27, 2005 February 24, 2013Brie, Inventing the Future

Last week I was asked about information management in Croquet. Editing and editorial are tough problems in any global information system. I don’t have a magic bullet, but I do think we have two general approaches.

Network Model Security

Stearns November 27, 2005 February 24, 2013General, Inventing the Future

Last week I described the network model we’re building for Croquet, and was asked about some security issues. I think the main security weaknesses to what I have described come from the ability to misrepresent oneself as the Introducer or as a machine responsible for a World, or to deny others access to a World or the Introducer by sending a bunch of messages to it that demand its attention. Part of the answer in both cases is to distribute the roles of Introducer and of Worlds among many machines