Write a 300 – 500 word article that tells the audience about a recent multimedia technology that is being or has been developed in the last six months and explain what you think the impact of this technology will have upon society.
While browsing through some of the BBC`s technology news channel articles and trying to piece together some earlier readings from gaming magazines, two main tendencies have resurfaced repeatedly. One of them is the user generated content, which of course has been around for a while (MODs, fanzines, even fan fictions or forum discussions that most likely fuelled producers` imagination for future titles) and is now taken to a new level, by being integrated in the dynamics of the actual product (instead of its initial role as a backstage prop). I`m thinking of some of the most hyped games of this autumn, Spore and Little Big Planet. These titles are representative because they also show off the other tendency I was thinking about, what the developers of Spore have dubbed `procedural generation`. Now, procedural animation and programming are not a new idea, they have been used in incipient forms in oldies like Elite (1984) or Daggerfall (1996) and the reason behind producers` interest in exploring the technology might be driven by the need to cut back on production costs (less storage space required and less pre-rendered material by hordes of graphic designers). Nevertheless, what caught my attention was that we might have reached a point when bulking up is slowly replaced by `smarting-up`. We are used to say that computers have become smarter in the last decades, but despite the `muscles` there has been little significant change in the user-machine relation (the eternal mouse and keyboard are a token to this). Things are beginning to change though, as we have become so reliant on our machines, we can`t `keep them in the dark` any longer. I remember having a discussion a few years ago with an acquaintance about rethinking the computers as `nervous systems` and what seemed fascinating to me was the idea of having machines wired to `feel` the world around them. By feeling I don`t mean soppy WALL-E sort of feeling, but the fact that computers rely on observing and evaluating ad-hoc conditions instead of scripted commands brings them closer to what we (are supposed to) behave like. The point I`m trying to make is about choices; god-games have offered users the possibility of facing (or avoiding, depending of the person`s gaming style) moral dilemmas, yet the idea of robots being given the same chance has been the stuff of `HALlywood` dystopias. There is something extremely disquieting about making machines more than instruments of our will. Playing the god-game in the real world is still risqué . If my memory serves me well, Asimov`s short story collection I, Robot deals specifically with the delicate balance between humans, robots and morality. And for one thing, reconsidering this issue might be highly recommended for this next step, but for all the HALophobes out there, this isn`t so much about machines. Every time things go horribly wrong technology gets the blame (again, HAL), which just goes to show how unwilling we are to update our moral/ethical compass to technology. Possibly, our `love affair` with our computers might encourage us to do so. It is so ironic to think that the driving force behind the technological express is the idea that there is something else (I`m not saying something better, but something else), that different solutions are out there, while, at the same time, we are thinking of ourselves as a `lost cause`, and cling to `solutions` that have proved deficient many times, just because we think of them as `the only way` or `the way things have always been`. Maybe a bit of procedural god-game that we are about to play in the years to come will make us more aware of the fact that `scripting` can`t solve all problems; that it`s about choices we make, choices that vary according to different circumstances and parameters. Of course, whether this will indeed happen in the future is just as well dependent on various circumstances…
While browsing through some of the BBC`s technology news channel articles and trying to piece together some earlier readings from gaming magazines, two main tendencies have resurfaced repeatedly. One of them is the user generated content, which of course has been around for a while (MODs, fanzines, even fan fictions or forum discussions that most likely fuelled producers` imagination for future titles) and is now taken to a new level, by being integrated in the dynamics of the actual product (instead of its initial role as a backstage prop). I`m thinking of some of the most hyped games of this autumn, Spore and Little Big Planet. These titles are representative because they also show off the other tendency I was thinking about, what the developers of Spore have dubbed `procedural generation`. Now, procedural animation and programming are not a new idea, they have been used in incipient forms in oldies like Elite (1984) or Daggerfall (1996) and the reason behind producers` interest in exploring the technology might be driven by the need to cut back on production costs (less storage space required and less pre-rendered material by hordes of graphic designers). Nevertheless, what caught my attention was that we might have reached a point when bulking up is slowly replaced by `smarting-up`. We are used to say that computers have become smarter in the last decades, but despite the `muscles` there has been little significant change in the user-machine relation (the eternal mouse and keyboard are a token to this). Things are beginning to change though, as we have become so reliant on our machines, we can`t `keep them in the dark` any longer. I remember having a discussion a few years ago with an acquaintance about rethinking the computers as `nervous systems` and what seemed fascinating to me was the idea of having machines wired to `feel` the world around them. By feeling I don`t mean soppy WALL-E sort of feeling, but the fact that computers rely on observing and evaluating ad-hoc conditions instead of scripted commands brings them closer to what we (are supposed to) behave like. The point I`m trying to make is about choices; god-games have offered users the possibility of facing (or avoiding, depending of the person`s gaming style) moral dilemmas, yet the idea of robots being given the same chance has been the stuff of `HALlywood` dystopias. There is something extremely disquieting about making machines more than instruments of our will. Playing the god-game in the real world is still risqué . If my memory serves me well, Asimov`s short story collection I, Robot deals specifically with the delicate balance between humans, robots and morality. And for one thing, reconsidering this issue might be highly recommended for this next step, but for all the HALophobes out there, this isn`t so much about machines. Every time things go horribly wrong technology gets the blame (again, HAL), which just goes to show how unwilling we are to update our moral/ethical compass to technology. Possibly, our `love affair` with our computers might encourage us to do so. It is so ironic to think that the driving force behind the technological express is the idea that there is something else (I`m not saying something better, but something else), that different solutions are out there, while, at the same time, we are thinking of ourselves as a `lost cause`, and cling to `solutions` that have proved deficient many times, just because we think of them as `the only way` or `the way things have always been`. Maybe a bit of procedural god-game that we are about to play in the years to come will make us more aware of the fact that `scripting` can`t solve all problems; that it`s about choices we make, choices that vary according to different circumstances and parameters. Of course, whether this will indeed happen in the future is just as well dependent on various circumstances…
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