Recently in Hypermediation Category

Ok, the title is a bit grandiose, but this guy is on to something.

From Ming:

Samuel Pepys, the renowned 17th century British diarist, now has a weblog. That is, Phil Gyford has imported Pepys' diaries into a Movable Type weblog format. And, not enough with that, now he is arranging it so that, from today, one entry is being posted each day, corresponding to the same date in the year 1660. And the weblog is even syndicated with RSS. It feels strange to read it, across all that time, as if it is happening today.

So Pepys, providing detailed descriptions of his whereabouts, was essentially geoblogging almost 350 years ago. There is talk over at Gyfords site of tying these location-specific blogs entries with digitized maps of London in 1660. So imagine this, you're reading a blog entry from 1660, and being able to see precisely where in London this chap was, are now able to tie place, time and personal historical accounts together into a more complete picture. As time goes on I can imagine these types of historical blogs, along with maps, historical data, VR renderings, everything we know about that place and time, creating a more connected and intimate account of history. History and place becoming part of cyberspace. Imagine being able to surf through history like we do the internet today:

You are in London in 1660 (think simplified holodeck). You are able to travel around, visiting buildings, pubs, events, other peoples diaries (blogs) of the day. Eventually this first-hand knowledge is combined with all other available historical knowledge to create an immersive VR experience, providing a compelling and highly education romp through history. Wow.

By Paul | Permalink | Comments (4) |

In the growing trend of merging cyberspace with physical space, Blogmapper facilitates the connection between published blog entries and specific locations. Zooming in on a specific location or site and you'll be able to see an annotated or blogged history of everyone who has published information about it. As wearable, ubiquitous computing becomes pervasive, every location will become increasingly augmented and annotated (text, audio, video), providing a rich context of historical, personal, emotional, social and commercial connections and perspectives.

By Paul | Permalink |

Imagine a time in the near future when almost everyone has a real-time always-on connection to the Net via ubiquitous wearable "augmented reality" devices. As part of this package, made possible with advance miniaturized heads-up displays, video cameras, location aware devices, GPS, swarmbots, emotion-sensitive and adaptive algorithms (i.e. Affective Computing), and sophisticated reputation systems, you are able to surf an augmented version of reality itself in real time.

Lets break this down. You would be able to, in real-time see precisely whats going on anywhere in the globe by jacking in to the collection of real-time video blogs. As part of this collection, sophisticated 3-D rendering engines would be able to take the collective video footage and extropolate a real-time VR scene, allowing you to transcend the viewing angle of any single camera. Better still, you could jack in to that part of the world from a variety of, not only physical perspectives, but political, intellectual, and emotional as well based on whatever any individual user makes public as part their unique sliding-scale trust system such as the type that Joi Ito has proposed with moblogs. All of this meta-data would form its own collective smart-mob based on individually selected criteria.

What this means is that you could then view the "scene" from virtually any angle. Imagine the possibility here. Some spontaneous news event occurs, and almost instantly as hundreds of people appear on the scene with wearable video cameras broadcasting on the net, you would be able to view this real-time scene from any angle, while simultaneously gaining the collective emotional assesment of the situation from those people choosing to broadcast their emotional indices, as well as the blogging that will invariable start occuring at rapid pace from your customized reputation/trust criteria.

All of this combines to gives you a real-time augmented, yet customized view of real-time reality. One that is rich in social and emotional context, providing and extending intimacy by empowering you to feel and touch the whole world.

By Paul | Permalink | Comments (1) |

I just discovered Headmap.org, and it's pure technology-fueled counter-culture at its best. From their website:

location aware devices . nomads . mapping sex . future architecture [life without buildings] . human geography . hyp(g)nosis . esoteric energy intelligence . community schisms . waypoints . psychogeography . community and spatial interfaces.

By Paul | Permalink | Comments (2) |