Technology Horizons

Me as a Word Graph

Anthony Townsend — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 04:35:32 -0700

Wordle is sweeping it's way across the web, and while I've been a reluctant aficionado of tag clouds, this Java applet can turn any arbitrary set of text, web page, or del.icio.us feed and turn it into an -attractive- tag cloud. Yes, attractive is the operative word.

Here's the tag cloud of my del.icio.us feed, and I'm shocked at what an accurate fingerprint it is of my research interests over the last year.

Technology Horizons

Welcome to Digital Mobs

Marina Gorbis — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 16:31:40 -0700

A husband writes an impassioned letter on one of the popular Internet bulletin boards denouncing a college student he suspects of having an affair with his wife. Immediately, throngs of people join in the attack, and within days the numbers grow to tens of thousands, with “teams of strangers hunting down the student, hounding him out of his university, and causing the family to barricade themselves inside the home." http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/03/.

Technology Horizons

The Unwieldy World of Peer-produced Video

David Evan Harris — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 19:52:47 -0700

From the San Francisco Chronicle, Nov. 30, 2007, interview with Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia:

Q: Do you plan on adding more audio and video features?

A: There's not a lot of demand for that from the community. An encyclopedia is inherently textual. Audio or video is a little tricky because it's hard to collaboratively edit it. People can just submit stuff, but if you don't like it, you can't fix it, so it doesn't really fit our style.

IFTF Signals Pool

New report on the U.S. innovation system

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 10:47:57 -0700

The Institute does quite a bit of work these days on the future of innovation and innovation systems. So I was interested to see a report by the Information Technology and Innovation Forum (ITIF) on the U.S. innovation system. (It also caught my eye because long ago I took a sociology of work class with one of the report's authors.) From the press release:

IFTF Signals Pool

Rethinking Free Speech Online

Jess Hemerly — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 13:33:06 -0700

We often think, talk, and write about social networking and public spaces online. But it's easy to forget an important part of the modern-day Internet: private companies rule the Web. Yahoo, Google, Facebook, MySpace are private companies with payrolls, investors, and ultimate ownership over the spaces we use to share and collect information. Are they limiting free speech? Or are we foolish to think of our speech as something that should be "free" in spaces that depend on subscriptions or advertising to stay alive?

Technology Horizons

Capsule Review of Clay Shirky's "Here Comes Everybody"

Anthony Townsend — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 12:49:06 -0700

Oh, the irony.

I've been trying to read Clay Shirky's new book on social software and online groups, "Here Comes Everybody" for about the last 3 months. However, everytime I crack it open and start digging into this very thoughtful and fast-paced critique of the group economy, I am interrupted by some incoming email or IMs (the original Gen X-er social networks), tweets, or the recollection of some unfinished Wikipedia edit or blog entry.

Technology Horizons

Cease-and-desist letter sent to California-based personalized genetics startups

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 12:51:09 -0700

California likes to think of itself as a high-tech friendly place, and generally it is. However, Alexis Madrigal reports that the state government has decided to go after personal genetics companies:

Last Monday, the state's laboratory field services group issued 13 cease-and-desist letters to genetic testing companies. Wired.com obtained a copy of the letters (pdf.) from two recipients. And the tough talk in a recent teleconference among regulatory officials confirms the seriousness of the department's intent.

"We [are] no longer tolerating direct-to-consumer genetic testing in California," Karen Nickles, Chief of Laboratory Field Services at the health department, told members of the Clinical Laboratories Advisory Committee on June 13.

Targeted companies include personal genomics startups 23andMe and Navigenics. These services are seen as the leading edge of a new type of health care in which consumers can use their genetic profile to tailor their medical and lifestyle choices. The established medical community, however, is wary of the technology arguing that the medical utility of some tests is unproven. Doctors also complain that direct-to-consumer services bypass them as the gatekeepers and analysts of medical information, which they worry could confuse consumers, not to mention cost them a billing event.

The health department's actions are a direct challenge to the viability of the infant DNA-testing industry, for which physician involvement is shaping up to be a major battleground. As far back as a September 2006 meeting, health department officials were voicing concerns over "nutrigenetic tests that analyze a limited number of genes to give personalized nutritional and lifestyle recommendations."

(via Virginia Postrel's Dynamist Blog)

Health Horizons

Pentagon moving into social science

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 11:21:02 -0700

The New York Times reports on a new Pentagon program to make more systematic use of social scientists.

Eager to embrace eggheads and ideas, the Pentagon has started an ambitious and unusual program to recruit social scientists and direct the nation’s brainpower to combating security threats like the Chinese military, Iraq, terrorism and religious fundamentalism.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has compared the initiative — named Minerva, after the Roman goddess of wisdom (and warriors) — to the government’s effort to pump up its intellectual capital during the cold war after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957.

Although the Pentagon regularly finances science and engineering research, systematic support for the social sciences and humanities has been rare. Minerva is the first systematic effort in this area since the Vietnam War, said Thomas G. Mahnken, deputy assistant secretary of defense for policy planning, whose office will be overseeing the project.

But if the uncustomary push to engage the nation’s evolutionary psychologists, demographers, sociologists, historians and anthropologists in security research — as well as the prospect of new financial support in lean times — has generated excitement among some scholars, it has also aroused opposition from others, who worry that the Defense Department and the academy are getting too cozy.

$50 million will be routed through the National Science Foundation, in an effort to make the program feel more familiar-- to reduce anxiety among researchers about working with the military, and increase the scholarly rigor.

X2 Project

Kid Rock: iTunes rips off artists

Jess Hemerly — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 10:14:35 -0700

The BBC reports that Kid Rock believes iTunes doesn't pay enough to the artists, and has resisted offering his tracks through the service. (However, note that later in the article it says his latest single is available through iTunes in the UK.)

The most interesting part of this whole issue is Kid Rock's comments on filesharing:

Technology Horizons

IFTF 2004 Forecast demo now an iPhone application

Michael Liebhold — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 11:03:37 -0700

It was bound to happen: Colleen Morgan, an archeologist from the University of California, Berkeley working at the historic San Francisco Presidio, has created an almost perfectly similar mobile mapping application for an iPhone as a nearly identical demo application that Chris Goad created, and Jason Tester populated with both real and fanciful geodata for the IFTF Technology Horizons New Geographies conference in 2004 also at the San Francisco Presidio!!

Technology Horizons

iPhone and citizen science

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 23:07:18 -0700

Alexis Madrigal throws a link to the X2 Project in his post on the addition of GPS in the iPhone:

With Steve Jobs' announcement that the iPhone 3G will have geolocation built-in, plenty of people are excited about finding good restaurants near them or worried about the privacy implications....

X2 Project

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Make the Future! 30 Second Forecasts & Flickr

Jess Hemerly — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 14:18:16 -0700

At our Make the Future! booth at Maker Faire in May, we asked Fairegoers who swung by our booth to record 30 second of their future forecasts. We got some great responses, all of which can be viewed on our Flickr photostream.

Technology Horizons

Tracking Mobile Swarms to Change the Way We See Cities

Anthony Townsend — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 06:39:17 -0700

Last fall, I reported on Alberto Barabasi's research using mobile phones to track large-scale human mobility patterns after seeing him give a paper on the topic in Budapest. That paper has now been published in Nature, and there is a public summary in Nature News.

Technology Horizons

Get Ready for the Carbon Neutral Factories

Anthony Townsend — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 09:25:26 -0700

MAS Holdings claims to have built the world's first carbon-neutral garment factory in Sri Lanka. The plant will make underwear for Marks & Spencer in the UK (they also make sexy lingerie for US-based Victoria's Secret).

While the plant cost 25% more to build than a traditional design (it would have been 15% without some frills due to being a showcase), with rising fuel prices it's expected to pay for the difference in less than five years.

Get ready for the carbon-neutral plants to pop up faster than garment factories after a Pearl River Delta rain.

Technology Horizons

"Walking" in Second Life

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 12:09:24 -0700

A Japanese team of researchers, led by Keio University biosciences and informatics professor Junichi Ushiba, has created a system that allows a paralyzed man to "walk" in Second Life.
Wired reports,

Researchers at Japan's Keio University have created an experimental headset designed to monitor brain waves that allowed a man who had been paralyzed for more than 30 years to control a Second Life avatar using only his thoughts.

Health Horizons

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Guerilla Media Wars

Anthony Townsend — Fri, 30 May 2008 07:03:30 -0700

In 2006, we published a Ten Year Forecast perspective called "Dark Mobs". Among other things, that piece argued that repeated top-down efforts to squelch file sharing actually created powerful incentives that drove the technology towards more distributed, secure architecture. The media giants, by killing Napster and Gnutella created the need for something as difficult to control as BitTorrent.

Technology Horizons

Lightweight R&D Infrastructure

Marina Gorbis — Sat, 24 May 2008 12:57:38 -0700

Interesting article by Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker about Nathan Myhrvold, former CTO of Microsoft, and his company called Intellectual Ventures http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/12/080512fa_fact_gladwell/?cu.... First, having just spent a few days working with Nathan, I found the following description of him hilarious:

IFTF Signals Pool

OCED on Innovation in China

Anthony Townsend — Mon, 19 May 2008 06:07:34 -0700

OCED Observer is running a good piece this month assessing the state of innovation in China:

Technology Horizons

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Flickr set: What will you bring to Maker Faire 2018?

Jess Hemerly — Wed, 14 May 2008 16:20:42 -0700

Technology Horizons

The Future of Libraries as Places

Anthony Townsend — Wed, 14 May 2008 07:54:10 -0700

Being the only IFTF staffer based in New York City, I've been taking a "maker" approach to office space. Why carry thousands of dollars per month overhead in this overheated real estate market, when there are any number of wireless parks and coffee shops to set up shop at?

Technology Horizons

Mixtapes & Playlists: A Few Favorites

Jess Hemerly — Mon, 12 May 2008 21:43:56 -0700

Online playlists are everywhere, some services better than others. As with most things that come in multiple forms on the web, I've messed around with many of them and have found a few favorites. (iMeem is not one of them.) Half of the fun is just browsing and listening to other people's mixes and with a bunch of good sites popping up, there's no shortage of mixes to browse. First, I like Muxtape, which allows you to upload tracks and make one 12-track mix under your username at a time.

Technology Horizons

IFTF in the news

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang — Mon, 12 May 2008 20:26:28 -0700

The Institute's new future of making map got a mention in the New York Times.

As important as tinkering has been to the nation’s past, it could become a much bigger deal before long, said David Pescovitz, a research director at the Institute for the Future, a consultancy in Silicon Valley. A new report from the institute argues that the makers could force enormous changes in the ways that goods and services are designed and manufactured. The renewed urge to tinker, along with flexible manufacturing technologies, could shift production from big companies and stores to communities of makers and consumers, Mr. Pescovitz said.

"It’s about having a deeper connection with the stuff around you, and through that with the people around you," he said. That is why his research group took the slogan from the pins given out at the Futurama pavilion at the 1939 World’s Fair — "I have seen the future" — and edited it for the report to "I am making the future."

"If you want something done right, do it yourself. That’s really what it’s about," Mr. Pescovitz said.

Ten-Year Forecast

The Daily Future

Jess Hemerly — Mon, 12 May 2008 16:58:50 -0700

Jason Tester, Chris Sumner, Chris Noessel, and Mike Love's modified newsstand showing headlines from the future won an Editor's Choice blue ribbon at Maker Faire last weekend.

The newsstand will be on display in our office on University Avenue in Palo Alto once we find the right spot for it. Until then, if you'd like to submit headlines, please visit http://dailyfuture.iftf.net/. We'd love to have your submissions!

Technology Horizons

Will sociability make Zune cool?

Jess Hemerly — Wed, 07 May 2008 16:32:13 -0700

With the rise of recommendation-based music discovery systems like Last.fm and iLike, and the increased importance of friends and contacts as trusted recommendation sources and filters, music discovery is more social than ever. In an attempt to compete with Apple's iPod success, Microsoft has announced that it will release a portable subscription card for its Zune players. Users had recommendation functionality in the past, but it was accessible only through the website. With the portable card, Zune users can share their favorites with other Zune users.

Technology Horizons

Technology Horizons conference

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang — Mon, 05 May 2008 12:11:57 -0700

Everyone at the Institute is at the Technology Horizons conference today on "The Future of Making." It's rather different from our usual events. Conference attendees started trickling in yesterday at the Maker Faire, and we put them through a couple exercises that encouraged them to spend some time exploring the Faire and talking to people. Today is more like our usual conferences: we're combining talks and roundtables, with exercises in which conference attedees think through the implications of what we're talking about.

Today's list of guests is also unusually interesting. Joshua Kauffman from Regional talked about DIY in Cuba (here's a video of a similar talk they gave at Stanford recently); Dale Dougherty (founder and editor of Make) and David Pescovitz (who divides his time between IFTF, Boingboing.net, and Make) talked about "the Maker mindset." Our panel on the future of open source included Bunny Huang (creator of the Chumby), Dan Morrill (Google Android), and Brian Carver (an IP attoruney at Fenwick & West). After lunch, we got into Citizen R&D with Eric Wilhelm (founder of Instructables), Hugh Rienhoff (founder of MyDaughtersDNA.org), Jeane Frost (founder of PatientsLikeMe.com), and Gary Wolf (a senior contributor at Wired, and now working on a project on the quantified self). Now, Mark Hatch (COO of TechShop), David ten Have (founder and CEO of New Zealand-based Ponoko), and Liam Casey (founder and CEO of PCH International) are talking about lightweight manufacturing.

Technology Horizons

Editor's Choice Blue Ribbon for IFTF @ Maker Faire!

Jess Hemerly — Mon, 05 May 2008 11:13:30 -0700

Technology Horizons

Make the Future! Future of Making Map

Jess Hemerly — Thu, 01 May 2008 18:46:57 -0700

We are pleased to present our map of the Future of Making! This is our first Creative Commons–licensed map and we plan to share and distribute it at Maker Faire this weekend. We're excited to use it as a way to tie the innovation and general awesomeness of Maker Faire to our research on the future of making.

Click here to get to the map.

Technology Horizons

Maker Faire: It's About Rethinking Assumptions

Marina Gorbis — Thu, 01 May 2008 18:10:10 -0700

Maker Faire opened today with a Maker Day—a time for Makers to meet each other and showcase some of their cool projects. As I was listening to Umberto Crenca, one of the founders of AS220, a non-profit arts center in Providence, RI, that provides spaces for different types of media artists and performers, it occurred to me that the Faire is not just about seeing great DIY projects, it is about much more; it is about breaking established modes of thinking, established approaches to living, working, organizing.

Technology Horizons

Atlantic v. Howell Ruling: A Troubling Caveat

Jess Hemerly — Thu, 01 May 2008 15:20:48 -0700

Yesterday I posted about the decision [PDF] in Atlantic v. Howell that found having a shared folder on a sharing service does not constitute copyright violation. After the initial excitement wore off, analysts began to look at a second part of that ruling which, according to David Kravets at Wired, could "embolden" the RIAA's lawsuit extravaganza.

Technology Horizons

"Shared folder" != copyright violation

Jess Hemerly — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 15:29:01 -0700

After years of muscling fans into settlements and lawsuits over sharing folders of music on various P2P services, a judge has ruled that offering a "shared folder" of media does not constitute a copyright violation unless there is proof that an actual file changed hands.

From PC World:

Technology Horizons

A year of television = 2000 Wikipedias

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 13:52:44 -0700

My colleague Jason Tester pointed out (ultimately via Boing Boing) a post by Clay Shirky that helps answer a question that often comes up about collaborative media. As Jason put it, "Often when I give talks illustrated with examples like Wikipedia, delicious, Flickr, etc, to largely non-tech audiences (HR for example) someone will ask 'Where do people find the time?' or the less thoughtful 'Is this just about nerds in basements?'"

Clay points out two things. First, that a lot of time that goes into writing blogs, adding content to wikis, mashing things up on Google Earth, etc., is taken from other activities like television-watching. He notes that Americans watch something like 200 billion hours of television a year.

That's an amazing amount of time, and when you can take little bits of your time and spend them on projects that other people can also spend little bits of time on, it adds up pretty quickly.

Technology Horizons

Have you taken your smart pill today?

Vivian Distler — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 15:19:53 -0700

Coming soon to a pharmacy near you . . . pills that can monitor when they have been taken and what effects they are having on your body. Michael Chorost, who spoke at IFTF's recent Ten Year Forecast Conference, reports in MIT's Technology Review about Proteus Biomedical's development of in-body computing platforms.

Technology Horizons

Tech Horizons Keynote: MythBuster Adam Savage

Jess Hemerly — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 14:28:40 -0700

We've confirmed our keynote for the Spring Tech Horizons conference May 4–5: a conversation with Adam Savage of the Discovery Channel show MythBusters! We're excited! If you haven't registered or need more information, please contact Jeannie Swanson at jswanson@iftf.org.

Technology Horizons

Hybrid mongoose-robot system detects land mines

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 10:35:48 -0700

As most of us know, landmines are a serious threat to both soldiers in wartime and civilians in peacetime. (Farmers and construction workers in Europe still occasionally find landmines from World War II.) Finding and disabling them has traditionally been dangerous, time-consuming work. Engineers in Sri Lanka have developed a "human-animal-robot integrated system" to find anti-personnel landmines.

Technology Horizons

Me Media

Marina Gorbis — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 16:35:13 -0700

Earlier today, my colleague, Anthony Townsend, sent a note to Technology team members letting us know that he has started using a private del.icio.us account to keep his stuff “better organized and to use it for personal bookmarks” (this in addition to IFTF del.icio.us account that serves as a collective bookmarking site for everyone at IFTF. I've been using a private del.icio.us account for my stuff for a while, for the same reasons as Anthony. Others chimed in to say they also do this.

Technology Horizons

IFTF at Bay Area Maker Faire 2008

Jess Hemerly — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 17:01:46 -0700

Thanks to everyone who came by our booth to draw a vision of the future, record a video about the future, or just chat with us about who we are and what we do. We had a great time.

We're currently thinking about the best way to share the videos and MAKE: 2018 covers online. As soon as we get that figured out we will put them up and announce the location here.

Thanks also to everyone who joined us at the Spring Exchange, makers, friends, and clients alike. It was a great exchange.

Technology Horizons

The X2 project

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 15:41:47 -0700

For the last 6 months or so, I've been working on a big new project at the Institute. I haven't written that much about it, as we've been... quiet. Now, though, we're starting to take the project public.

IFTF Staff Posts

My Roomba Moment

Marina Gorbis — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 17:13:29 -0700

Standing in the middle of my living room surveying the floors covered with crumbs left over from last night's seder, I finally decided—this is the Roomba moment!

Technology Horizons

Visualization through Interpretive Dance

Jess Hemerly — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 15:44:47 -0700

Visualizations of all kinds are becoming a new literacy for understanding data, from crocheted coral reefs to tag clouds to digital heat maps. But that's only the tip of the iceberg. A friend just sent me this amazing video directed by Robert Alan Weiss for Stanford's Department of Chemistry in 1971. It's an interpretive dance re-enactment of protein synthesis called "Protein Synthesis: An Epic on a Cellular Level," filmed on Stanford's campus.

Technology Horizons

On Morning Edition

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 10:48:55 -0700

Cyrus Farivar quotes me at the end of his latest NPR Morning Edition piece, "High-Tech Pen Makes Note-Taking Easier." In my sound bite, I reveal that I like my Moleskine notebook because it's harder for me to break paper than the screen on my Nokia N95.

X2 Project

Post-scientific society

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 17:45:11 -0700

I've been in Malaysia and Singapore this week, conducting workshops on the future of science and innovation. It's been a very interesting week, talking to scientists in Penang and Kuala Lumpur about the future of science, and what role they see Malaysia playing in that future. The people I've been talking to are pretty convinced that Malaysia, which has a respectable but not world-class scientific community, can evolve into a global player in science in the next couple decades. They don't want to emulate American and European institutions: you won't see multi-billion dollar particle accelerators here any time soon. But they're pretty aware that cloud computing, cheap genomics, and other inexpensive research tools will lower the economic bars to develop world-class competence in some important fields. So I was especially struck by Gregg Zachary's latest column in the New York Times, which asks, "might cheap science from low-wage countries help keep American innovators humming?"

Technology Horizons

Media Execs Still Don't Get It

Jess Hemerly — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 13:22:10 -0700

From CNet via ArsTechnica:

Technology Horizons

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Guitar Zeros

Jess Hemerly — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 10:28:14 -0700

By now everyone is familiar with the hit video game Guitar Hero and its multiplayer offshoot, Rock Band. And while I'd never argue that being able to achieve 100% on "Freebird" on Expert makes you a real musician (I can't do it... yet), there is a band that relies on Guitar Hero controllers to make their own music.

Using software on their laptops, Guitar Zeros modded their XBOX Guitar Hero controllers. They've turned the plastic toys into real synth instruments that can make as many different sounds as their computers allow.

Technology Horizons

Clay Shirky Talks About Online Community on the Colbert Report

Anthony Townsend — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 05:33:35 -0700

Last night I saw Clay Shirky, Jimmy Wales, Tim Wu and Jonathan Zittrain on a panel at the NYU Law School. Apparently I missed Clay's appearance 2 weeks ago on the Colbert Report, talking about his new book.

Technology Horizons

Peer-to-Peer Infrastructure for Virtual Worlds:

Anthony Townsend — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 06:43:58 -0700

Technology Review reports today on VastPark, a new Australian startup that is taking a peer-to-peer approach to managing load in virtual worlds. Seems like an interesting alternative to central servers or pre-distributing graphics, but I'll be curious to see if it stands up to the test of real world swarms:

Technology Horizons

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Twitter makes itself useful

Jess Hemerly — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 13:16:31 -0700

Rather, the people of San Francisco trying to get a glimpse of the Olympic Torch on Wednesday made Twitter useful. With the officials faking out everyone by throwing the torch on a bus and driving it to Van Ness to start an alternate route, connected citizens began to "tweet" the torch's whereabouts, whether rumors overheard on the street or information from traditional news media. Olympic Torch SF organized the Twitter profile for the event, and all of the tweets can be viewed at SFTorch.

Technology Horizons

New Startup Finally Brings Web 2.0 to Forums

Anthony Townsend — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 09:08:14 -0700

Paul Bragiel, who built what was one of the more interesting mobile social communities around his Meetro IM platform, has now brought Web 2.0 sensibilities to the world of many-to-many discussion forums. His new startup Lefora launched today, provides an elegant hosted alternative to the terribly ugly, labor-intensive decade-old hodge podge of forum software out there like phpBB.

Technology Horizons

Sustainability How-to: Green Business Digest

Jess Hemerly — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 13:14:36 -0700

Anthony stumbled onto a great resource for information on green business trends: BusinessWeek's Green Business Newsletter. It's a monthly digest that pulls together the magazine's coverage of green issues and business trends. This month's topic is Green Design.

From BusinessWeek:

Technology Horizons

Songbird: Future of the Free Media Web

Jess Hemerly — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 12:40:55 -0700

Two things we are beginning to talk about regularly at IFTF are open source and free media. Songbird, a media player in development by San Francisco's Pioneers of the Inevitable, harnesses both of these things. Songbird recently released its 0.5 version, and while not quite ready for consumers yet, it is building a strong community of developers and users.

From their website:

Play music. Play the Web.

Technology Horizons

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Metaverse Infrastructure Emerging, and Ethnographies of Blended Reality

Anthony Townsend — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 06:53:28 -0700

The Virtual Worlds 2008 conference is going on in New York this week, and Technology Review is reporting on the announcement of the first of a wave of tools we'll see for inter-operability of virtual worlds like Second Life or Club Penguin.

In this instance, the demo is being used to show how virtual worlds that require fancy 3-d clients can be re-rendered in browsers as Flash content. As TR reports:

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