On his excellent blog, the user-experience expert Nick Finck shares a TED video demonstration of Sixth Sense, a wearable gestural interface that grabs data from the Internet and allows you to interact with it in countless real-world ways. You can draw a watch onto your arm to check the time; pull up Amazon ratings for a book you’re about to buy, and then project everything onto the book itself; take photographs by forming a rectangle with your fingers; and so forth. Developed by Pranav Mistry of the MIT Media Lab, Sixth Sense is just a prototype right now, but the implications are amazing.
In this TED video, Pattie Maes gives a demonstration of Sixth Sense.
While the prospect of a more immersive entertainment experience is highly appealing to many, this new chapter in technology is opening new doors for human interaction with artificial intelligence that were only possible in science fiction films such as Steven Spielberg’s A.I. Developed for years at Lionhead Studios under the pseudonym The Dimitri Project, Milo is a new brand of AI that totally blew every attendee at E3 away.
Learn more about Milo and Spielberg’s thoughts on Project Natal and how it relates to technological advancement…
Sundance Channel may not normally be in the habit of talking about mainstream summer blockbusters, but often there are interesting threads on the fringes that grow out of these pop culture behemoths.
Take Artie Vierkant, who stitched together all episodes of Star Trek Voyager into a grid in a single sped up video. Unlike most science fiction or space adventure shows, Vierkant’s clip does at least one thing right: There is no sound in space!
The movie site firstshowing.net has the excellent new trailer for MOON, an indie sci-fi film that debuted at the Sundance Film Festival and hits theaters, in limited release, on June 12. Starring Sam Rockwell as a solitary astronaut preparing to head home after a three-year stint on the moon, the film appears to be a psychologically rich character study that closely follows the Kubrick thematic blueprint: prolonged isolation, unmediated identity, and the coldness of technology. Rockwell’s character even has a HAL-like companion called GERTY, voiced by Kevin Spacey. This trailer also reminds me a bit of Danny Boyle’s decent 2007 offering SUNSHINE.
I’m definitely planning to catch this in the theater.
In January, Alex Billington of First Showing wrote a review of MOON after seeing it at Sundance.
