Flying Saucers for the Commute

From The Guardian:

"In fictional visions of the future they fill the skies, zipping people around in air-cushioned comfort. But flying cars have been conspicuously absent from real life".

The M200G | The Guardian | The Telegraph

Ambient Orbs - Making Data Visible

An ambient orb is a little ball that changes color in coordination with a selected data input. The orbs were originally used to track stocks, but now Southern California Edison is beginning to use them as tool to allow people to track, and hopefully change, their energy consumption patterns. Wired | On The Media (listen)

Scaling Second Life - A First Person Report

Yesterday I had a chance to attend an online meeting at the Architecture Island in Second Life on the issue of scale in the Virtual World.

This was the first meeting I have ever attended in Second Life, and to be completely honest I still have problems even sitting down. Let's just say that I am still learning how to use my avatar.

Clumsiness aside, it was an interesting discussion about the scaling of objects, including architecture, in Second Life. Objects in Second Life are a larger scale mainly because as you move around the spaces you are watching your avatar from a camera on top of his, her, or its head. The subsequent scalar illusion makes that most avatars are about one and a half times larger the size of a typical human. How do you then use Second Life as a tool to create prototypes for real projects? The group decided to create a universal standard to help that transition.

But the most interesting conversations happened when the participants where questioning the very idea of scale and even built environment in Second Life. Do you need things to be scaled correctly if through clever camera manipulations you can inhabit a small model as much as you can a full-scale version?

On the issue of the virtual world of the future some people where saying how it will begin to look more and more like the cities that we are used to. Except that they would be inhabited completely differently, as a digital representation of your space but connecting you to information and, as mentioned before in Archinect, as a way to augment your Real Life. It seems that even when anything is possible people still seek that which is familiar. I would have to agree that it is nice to be able to interact space in ways that you can relate to, after all we have enough globfrag in the 2D virtual world, I could not imagine how it would be if on top of learning to digest the new information you also had to learn how to negotiate your space all over again.

Overall it was an interesting meeting, I was a little surprised no one was using SL's new voice capability, but instead everything was typed (good way to keep a transcribe though). What will the virtual future look like?

If you are interested in helping or want to find out about other events go here.

This entry was posted originally in Archinect.

democratizing virtual world design and browsing

As mentioned before, there is a great move now towards realizing that virtual worlds are just at their infant stage. Recently, Philip Rosedale, CEO of Linden Labs predicted at the Always On conference that within ten years the number of people in virtual worlds (like Second Life) will overtake the number of web users.

Looking towards that future, Netscape alumns launched Multiverse, the first direct competitor to Second Life. Instead of a single virtual world, Multiverse is a platform that allows you to create and browse different worlds and games using the same avatar. Their economic system is also different from Second Life's, allowing you to sell anything and taking a 10% tax.

Finally, an article in which Architect Lesley Gavin, BT futurologist, looks ahead to a time when real and virtual worlds mix as easily as making a mobile phone call. BBC News

iLIMB

A few days after MIT announced the first robotic ankle, a company in the UK has outfitted 5 people with bionic arms. TouchBionics

Iraq Vet Shows Off Bionic Hand philly.com | National Geographic

Stephen Colbert's iEYE Colbert Report

robotics and the blade runner generation

Forget iPods and BlackBerries. Soon, we will transfer information by thought, run faster and further without tiring, and orgasm on demand. What started as a quest to help the disabled will revolutionise the lives of the able-bodied. Even Bill Gates agrees: robotics is the next giant leap for mankind. TimesOnline
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Army vet demos MIT robotic prosthesis; device is first of its kind. MIT News

boston to build avatar of itself in second life

From the Boston Globe:

"Close your eyes and imagine this dream of the future: a place where you can stand in line to pay parking tickets, visit an auditorium where the mayor is giving a speech, or drop in on a meeting where planning officials are wrestling with development plans.

You might be forgiven if you think that doesn't sound like a very exciting dream. Or if you think the place already exists, in a concrete building at Government Center.

But Boston officials aren't talking about the real City Hall. They want to build a new, virtual one in the animated online world of Second Life, where users create digital images of themselves and live alternate lives, working virtual jobs, attending virtual nightclubs, and chatting with other virtual people..."

Virtual version of foot bridge that connects Cambridge to Allston

the tragedy of suburbia

Archinect Discussion
It is good to see Kunstler's fervent advocacy for the American city and a recognition that our built environment is broken. However, one has to question Kunstler's conservative acceptance of new urbanism and its results (Seaside FL) and complete loathing of modernism. Going back to pre-industrial city is no longer a possibility and to move forward we have to learn from all hte architectural knowledge, not just the one we like.

Sadly, the virtual world in perpetuating the suburban myth copying it uncritically.

war as network

One of the paradoxes of the beginning of this century is how a group of people living in some of the most remote places on earth seem to be having the upper hand in adjusting their operations to the technology of the day. This otherwise fascistic conservative enemy, is somehow apt at using the newest in technologies and ways of working in their fight, by:

1- Using the internet as much a possible to communicate, train, and propaganda (now, even Second Life)
2- Working as a loose network of independent cells, making them hard to track

The same as any military advance it will take some time to adjust, a task that seems like it would be hard for a body of government that is known for its centralized systems and top-down management. However, the best and brightest in uniform are theorizing and developing ways to move forward. If you are interested, check out this very detailed report on complexity theory as it applies to the war with AlQaeda by Lieutenant Colonel Michael F. Beech, United States Army Report (PDF). The Department of Defense is also looking into ways of weaponizing the web.

I hope that as we wake up from the ongoing nightmare that is Iraq, we come up with the ways of thinking we need to develop to ultimately beat this enemy that shows the will to adapt quickly. From Roman military settlements, to moats, to the suburbs, war technologies and systems always end up influencing the way we experience our built environment, as we develop the new systems we need to beat AlQaeda I wonder how they will influence our design practices.

Articles used throughout this blog entry:
CS Monitor | Internet jihad: tackling terror on the Web
Economist | A world wide web of terror
BBC | U.S. plans to 'fight the web' revealed
Washington Post | The web as weapon

Air War College

marketers: second life is dead, viva la twitter!

As reported a few days ago, Second Life is seeing its market squeezed by competition and a general sense that besides being 'cool' not much is really happening in there. Now two of the U.S.'s top papers are getting into the SL bashing. The LA Times reports on the mass exodus of advertisers and companies. The NYT follows the LA Times article, repeating some of its premises, and praising the qualities of twitter.

towards a teledildonic architecture

++WARNING++ some of the links on this post are not suitable for work

While the ivory tower figures out how to bring the virtual and physical together, the sex industry moans in indifference. They have been exploring in that field (successfully I would presume) for some time now using teledildonics. The way it works is that at either end people hold his and hers sex toys (in whatever preference and in every possible combinations), a software panel then allows for a partner to remotely control said sex toy.

GirlsRainbow diagram of a recordable teledildonic experience:

Sinulate control panel:Thinking that we will increasingly get information (including that which can produce orgasms) fed directly to us via the web, it seems like architecture will be deployed as a human-proportioned pleasure machine, bringing you the views, smells, sounds, and whatevers of your choosing. The city of pods is making a come back!

networking energy

We are running out of oil and soon its extraction costs will go through the roof due to the volatility of the few places in the world were can still get it from. It is time to start thinking about alternatives. But what will this alternative look like?

Will it follow today's main way of centralized production of energy like this video shows:


Or will it follow a decentralized format closer to this video:


The answer could be a defining moment for the city (and more specifically the neighborhood), what it looks like, and how it functions. The first proposal seems grossly of scale, were it to malfunction maintenance would not be very easy, and because of its grandeur it could be a possible target for attacks. The second proposal seems to suggest that we need to move away from the grand infrastructural projects that defined the beginning of modernity and move towards smaller scales of interconnected networks, which would be more appropriate for our new culture of decentralized informational exchange.

At the end of the day, it may be that it is not a choice between one and the other, but a combination that allows for the interconnectivity of individuals to form a network that is then enhanced by a smaller central system (to make sure that power is never out).

all ghost no shell

It should surprise no one that spiritual and religious groups are beginning to use Second Life as a place of worship. Coming together around a set of beliefs is as old as, well... Adam, or Wountie the hopi warrior, or Lucy the fossil.

People are beginning to create Synagogues and Churches, preachers are beginning to lash out against e-sin and e-xcesses and their consequences. These groups are beginning to tackle ethical issues from virtual affairs to what your avatar wears.

Now back to the title, is a virtual life the closest we can come to having a literal "spiritual" experience? What I mean is that in the virtual world you are transported into another being a ghost with no physical form. That is probably too much of a stretch (although isn't spirituality all about stretching?), still I wonder how our spiritual life will change as it becomes further digitized. Also, I think I find the prospect of designing a place for spiritual epiphany exciting.


image from The Decatur Daily

digital democracy

Internet radio has proven again that the internet is a great mobilizing medium. They were able to get people to care enough about digital music for them to contact their congress people and stop the rate hike.

from Wired' digital listening post:

He said everyone who called their Congress person about this should feel that they had an effect on the process: "This is a direct result of lobbying pressure, so if anyone thinks their call didn't matter, it did. That's why this is happening." The flyer DiMA distributed to Congress today probably helped a bit too, but overall, it appears Congress intervened due to pressure from web radio listeners."

Archinect Discussion

the aesthetics of sustainability

It would be hard to say that sustainable architecture 'looks' like something. However it is possible to look at a building and see the architectural devices that the natural systems the building engages. This is the case with Morphosis' latest in San Francisco.

Putting aside the issue of whether the building works as designed (something we will not find out for a while), the building LOOKS like a green machine. The building is composed of a series of architectural elements, (the stainless steel facade vs. the glass and louver facade, the metal mesh hat on top, the wavy plate that welcomes you into the building) that some how all come together to work as a cohesive whole.




Photos by Kurt Rogers for "Towering Expectations"

What is more, Thom Mayne describes his building process in a way that will be recognized by bloggers. He claims, in the video I posted below, that his buildings are about the multiplicity of systems that can only work through a dynamic relationship to each other. Isolating and working on those systems than becomes easier through the use of digital technology. The description reminds me of forums and blogs where the power comes not from the single thread, post, or thought, but in the layering of a series of them. The question that I take from this is whether the aesthetics of sustainability are connected to the aesthetics of digital communication. Can sustainable buildings, meaning those that engage the complexity of local environmental systems, be called media?

Other Articles: NYT | SFGate | B d+c

Video:

beyond second life

Second Life's dominance over the virtual world is beginning to show some cracks around the edges. It is predicted that within four years 80% of web users will have an account in a virtual world. But it is still to be seen how many of those people will actually be in Second Life. Advertisers are beginning to go elsewhere, China is making its own competing virtual worlds, and the very success of Second Life will force many websites to offer a 3-D virtual experience. In the not too long future Metaverse browsers will seamlessly take you from virtual world to virtual world, soon the entire web will be Second Life. Soon the most important webpage for a person will be their three dimensional Myspace page that will serve as the entry gates] to all the other virtual worlds. How and from where will you access your virtual world?

Read MIT Technology Review's Second Earth.

Quote (via the filter of Wired):
What's coming is a larger digital environment combining elements of all these technologies--a '3-D Internet,' to use the term preferred by David Rolston, CEO of Forterra Systems, a company in San Mateo, CA, that makes immersive training simulations for the U.S. Department of Defense and other first-responder agencies. People will enter this environment using PC-based software similar to the programs that already grant access to Second Life and Google Earth. These "Metaverse browsers" will be to the 3-D Internet what Mosaic and Netscape were to the dot-com revolution--tools that both provide structure (by defining what's possible) and enable infinite experimentation.

There will be a bunch of different worlds, owned, controlled, and operated by different organizations. They will be built on different platforms, and you will have community standards about how you can connect these worlds, and open-source software that carries you between them. The word "Metaverse" will refer to both the overarching collection of these worlds and the main port of entry to them, a sort of Grand Cyber Station that links to all other destinations.

Zwinky, one of Second Life's many competitors.

second life trees to restore rainforests

Plan-it 2020 and Second Chance Trees wants to restores rainforests with the help of the Second Life community. If they get the most votes by the end of the American Express' Members Project competition, American Express will donate one million dollars and in doing so help Second Chance Trees plant one million trees in endangered rainforest regions.

VOTE
visit them in-world

dual reality

Often while in Second Life people come up behind me and ask me, are you playing a game? And of course I say that it is not a game. The closest description I come up with is that it is akin to a 3-D chatting room or forum. Then I think about it and tell them that it is more like a virtual city. Yet this answer also leaves me unsatisfied.

It gets harder when one begins to explain projects that were designed first in the virtual world crossing over into the real world. Two recent projects that make such a cross are the aloft hotel and a garden design competition for a neighborhood of Paris. Still, these projects are being taken and moved into the real world and will lose the connection to the virtual. That is unless you are not experiencing these projects in Dual Reality.


Dual Reality, according to MIT's Media Lab, is "the concept of maintaining two worlds, one virtual and one real, that reflect, influence, and merge into each other by means of deeply embedded sensor/actuator networks." The Boston Globe reports today that Dual Reality technologies are being developed by MIT and Linden Labs to seamlessly weave your real and virtual lives. The equipment in development so far includes eyewear, earpieces, microphones that will constantly move information between the two worlds. Even iphone is apparently getting into the action.

As far as answering what Second Life IS, I do not think I will be able to answer that for a while. It may just be the type of thing that alludes words and, to even, comprehend one may just have to experience it; the new phenomenology for the digital age.

Anyway, it seems that the question designers should be asking is not what Second Life is, but how it will change our cities and how we design interactions with the built environment.

of sex beds and architecture

On what is a first, a Second Life resident is suing another in a U.S. court for the copyright of a virtual sex bed. Not knowing any of the details of the case, I cannot help but wonder how models produced in rhino and other 3D programs are any different than a digital sex bed made with prims in Second Life. Facing the reality that for the most part architects and landscape architect do not actually build buildings and landscapes but make representations for others to build them, this case can set an important precedent for the copyright laws that protect us.

I will keep an eye out for any news on the case and post any new information as it develops.

link to news story: Timesonline.co.uk

virtually speaking - intro and context

The lines between the virtual and the real are increasingly getting blurred, and this blurring is beginning to affect the built environment. This blurring of lines is happening at a time when the world is seriously looking for solutions to prevent a further despoliation of our environment. These two issues are putting special pressures on the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, and urban planning to:

-find more sustainable processes, methods, and technologies, for practice and design
-figure out how to use the open source nature of digital media (blogs, wikis, etc...) in practice, advocacy, theory, and design
-find a place within virtual reality forums (such as Second Life), as these worlds begin to cross over into reality and affect the built environment

context
Throughout my architectural education I have been interested in emerging digital media. I am less concerned with the CAD/CAM technologies built specially for architects and other related fields, than the connectivity technologies widely available to the public. This of course means, blogger, youtube, myspace, facebook, flickr, archinect, delicious, the fully virtual worlds like Second Life, and many others.

In a previous life, working side by side with Edward Mazria in the non-profit Architecture 2030, we began using digital media and presence to get the 2030 Challenge message out. All this culminated in the 2010 Imperative. An event that reached a quarter of a million design students, educators, and professionals organized by a few passionate individuals with laptops as Susan Szenazy, editor of Metropolis Magazine, wrote on her June 2007 editorial "Calling All Designers".

In 2006 I started a school blog in Archinect, where I continued musing on digital media.
Archinect entries and threads that inspired this project:
-musings on the virtual
-more musings on the virtual
-postopolis! @ archinect
-anti-starchitect chic
-editing wikipedia
-Heather Ring and Bryan Boyer's "Architecture's Second Life" and the subsequent discussion by the larger Archinect community


This blog will explore these, seemingly disconnected and even oxymoronic, issues specifically, while occasionally venturing off into whatever else seems appropriate.

Digital Turbines turn in the virtual wind.