Hologram
Mission: Possible
- By Laura CHAMBERS | Culture, User Experience July 19th, 2012
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What happens when what was only possible in the movies can happen in real life? When the far-fetched technology dreamed up by Hollywood screenwriters becomes the status quo? When the impossible becomes, well, possible?
Ten years down the road, Tom Cruise’s fantastical gesture-based computer system from Minority Report is no longer that fantastic and can easily be replicated with a few downloads and a trip to your local electronics store. If it’s mind-boggling technology you’re in search of, however, look no further than the real world.
A paralyzed woman with an implanted neural interface can use her mind to pick up a thermos of coffee with a robotic arm. The Port Authority of New York has turned to hologram-like avatars to improve customer service and robotic dogs are being used by the army to move gear around the battlefield.
So what’s next? According to Hollywood the future will be a creepy place where personality transplants and robotic surrogates are the norm. What’s creepier is that they may not be too far off.
A Russian media mogul is funding a sci-fi social initiative, Russia 2045, that hopes to see the creation of humanoid robots, artificial brains, and hologram-inspired avatars that will have the ability to host transplanted human personalities. This is oddly similar to the Avatar program currently being conducted by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop surrogates for soldiers.
I can’t help but wonder what implications these future technologies will have on the human existence. Will the future be like a giant game of The Sims where you control your body from afar? Will we get to push the ‘restart’ button and pick up where we left off should we ‘fail’ a level? Will we all have our personality and human consciousness backed up should we need to transfer them to another physical entity?
With technological innovation occurring so rapidly, the line between what is and isn’t possible will inevitably become smaller and smaller. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that we dreamed of the gesture-controlled computers that we saw in the movies.
Tags: Avatar Project, Cyborg, DARPA, Future Technology, Hologram, Humanoid, Personality transfer, Russia 2045, Surrogates, Virtual Reality
Tupac gives the performance of a lifetime
- By Digital Utility TEAM | User Experience April 20th, 2012
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The very-much-alive Snoop Dogg (left) performs with a projection of Tupac
Tupac treated music fans to a special performance at this year’s Coachella festival. Appearing on stage alongside Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg, the rapper performed several songs to the delight of the 90,000 people in attendance. The only catch is that Tupac died 16 years ago and that it was a projection of his likeness performing. A visual-effects company created a fully digital 2D image of the rapper (without using any archived footage!) that was projected onto an angled piece of glass and projected onto a screen to give it a 3D appearance. The project, spearheaded by Dr. Dre, supposedly cost between $100,000 – $400,000 to create.
For those of you who didn’t get to catch Tupac’s performance, he’s scheduled to appear at Coachella again on Sunday night. There’s also a rumour that Dr. Dre and Snoop are planning on bringing their virtual co-performer on tour in the upcoming year.
Would you attend a concert that featured a hologram performer?
Tags: 2Pac, California, CGI, Coachella, Digital Domain, Dr. Dre, Hologram, Indio, Music Festival, Projection technology, Snoop Dogg, Tupac
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