Thursday, July 19, 2012

The future of television?


        Many people have tried to merge computer technology with television, but the problem remains elusive. Although most modern TV's can receive digital input, there's still no universal standard for seamlessly merging the two technologies into one. Still, piecemeal advances are continually being made in the form of new products that give computerized features to ordinary TV's.
        One entrant in the field is Reincloud, a Mountain View startup headed by Dan Reitan. Dan has a long history of applying computer technology to television. He was a pioneer in augmented reality TV and one of his inventions in the 1980s scored the highest TV ratings ever in the history of automated television. I visited his office this week and he gave me a demo of his current product, which I found quite interesting.
        It's not quite ready for delivery and he's looking for additional funding to take it to the next step, but it's basically a platform that grants new capabilities to content providers. For example, it gives the content provider tools to create a real life three dimensional world where the TV screen acts as a viewport. By manipulating a few buttons, the home viewer can rotate that 3-D world to bring any portion of it into the viewport. This functionality opens up new possibilities for both producing TV shows and viewing them, and making them much more interactive than before. 
        He also showed me a segment from an old Monty Python program, and while John Cleese was talking, a can of Mountain Dew tumbled into the picture and landed on the desk next to him. Basically, the technology allows the easy placement of virtual objects anywhere in an existing program, in an appropriate place, for example on a table and not hanging in space. Ultimately, these objects will be live links, and clicking on them will lead to further information about them. Of course you'll be able to return to your original program at any time. The implications not only for advertising but also for news and documentary programs are huge.
        Although I'm not expert enough to predict how these tools will do in the marketplace, they do seem to add some exciting new dimensions to our current TV viewing experience.

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Self driving car in your future?

Self driving car with Googlers (l-r) Eric
Schmidt, Larry Page and Sergey Brin
What could be better than letting your car drive you effortlessly through rush hour traffic, while you doze, read the newspaper, or answer your email? Although a number of companies, including Google, are working on self driving cars, they're still far from being a commercial reality. Getting a computer to operate the car's controls is the easy part. What's hard is to get it to drive safely and with good judgment in heavy traffic and unpredictable road conditions.  The car has to "see" the road and interpret what it sees in real time. It has to read and understand traffic signs, know all the traffic laws, and judge the speed, direction and distance of other vehicles. It also has to know when to break traffic laws to avoid dangerous situations, such as driving at the speed limit when everyone else is far exceeding it. It has to recognize emergency vehicles such as police and fire, and know how to behave when a policeman signals it to pull over. Although computers can already perform some of the functions of driving, it looks like it will be a while before we can yield total control to the machine.

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

The right to privacy?

Most people recognize the value of privacy, and the right to keep their personal life out of the public view. But is such a right enforceable in the Internet age? With almost everybody carrying miniature recording devices that take both pictures and sound, and with the ability to upload these images for the whole world to see, and with miniature surveillance cameras in almost every public place and every place of business, privacy may be becoming a thing of the past. Certainly, politicians have learned that the slightest misstatement on or off the podium can have instant national repercussions. Wikileaks has shown that secret diplomatic talks are not necessarily so secret anymore. And the potential for malicious spying just for the sake of causing mischief is very great. Technology seems to be moving far faster than any possible laws capable of restraining it. Does this new situation require changes in behavior? Will we have to be a lot more careful about we say and do, in both public and private venues? Although we still haven't digested the full impact of these changes, it might be a good idea to try to live our lives so that everything we do can withstand the light of day, because that light might be shining on us sooner than we think.