Fusing Design with Technology 39
PreacherTom writes "Since the creations by Walt Disney of Space Mountain and EPCOT, progressives have attempted to show us a picture of how technology will affect our future lives. More often than not, these pictures become laughable after 20 years. Not for Royal Philips Electronics, who at their Simplicity Event in London unveiled their picture of the seamlessly technological future, including e-blackboards, cosmetic skintone scanners, and (sure to make the mouths of geeks water) the amBXT Immersive Gaming Experience."
FP (Score:3, Funny)
Re:FP (Score:4, Funny)
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How many kinds of bad is that summary? (Score:5, Insightful)
2. "Progressives" - "I don't think that word means what you think it means." These days, "Progressive" means "a liberal, but we can't call him a liberal because that phrase is too unpopular with voters." Do you mean a futurist? A student of progress? Uh, who died and made you Hari Seldon? You have absolutely no way of knowing that Phillips' vision won't look equally laughable 20 years down the road. History suggests it will be just as laughable. If you could see the future, you'd be investing in the stock market, not posting to Slashdot.
The future will not only be stranger than we imagine, but stranger than we can imagine...
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You're going in the right direction with the World's Fair comment, but you can go a bit further back to 1851. Turns out the World's Fair has been running since then. Looking up the
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Perhaps in the US. But not in the Netherlands. It is generally not considered as progressive or leftist. The political term "liberalism" is considered to be right of the middle, whereas socialims is on the left side. Most business people in the Netherlands vote VVD, which is the liberal party.
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In that sense, none of the pasty-white do-gooder B.S. that 'liberals' espouse means squat. 'Liberal' translates to 'sometimes useful idiot' in those circles.
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The "sometimes useful idiot" applies more to the people who like to use the word "liberal" as a pejorative.
Douglas Adams is waay ahead of them... (Score:4, Funny)
not really (Score:2)
Hubris/bollocks (Score:3)
Not so fast (Score:3, Insightful)
Sounds like he is comparing apples to oranges here - information is a tool which can be used very effectively for achieving health and well being. So yes, while one can say that last decade was focused on information, I still see a huge room for improvement going forward - namely we need much better information classification to aid retrieval (for example, we can't search images, audio, or video unless they've been tagged). This, keeping focus on information is and will be essential for a Loooooooong time to come.
Still waiting since the 1930's for... (Score:2, Funny)
Pictures (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.presslink.nl/philipssimplicity/ [presslink.nl]
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The amBXT Immersive Gaming Experience. (Score:2)
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Predictions (Score:1)
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Well, I have really thought this true, and working to make it happen. Here's my vision of the future:
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Bright Future (Score:1)
People Focus: It's a two edged sword (Score:5, Interesting)
PEOPLE FOCUS. Consequently, Philips is changing, says Stefano Marzano, CEO and chief creative director for Philips Design, "from a company in which technology called the shots to one in which the focus is firmly on people."
To some degree this has to be regarded as poppycock. The corporation will never be focused on people, because people are merely instrumental to profit.
What this means is that the corporation will abstract what it sees as the relevant details of you, then place you in a pigeonhole. Information technology allows many details to be extracted, and the number of pigeonholes to be much larger than the two or three that pre IT era companies had to content themselves with.
See what I mean?
The result can be surprisingly good. In just the context of the relationship between the consumer and the company, this is on balance a good thing. The corporation must have a strategy for making a profit, and this requires that they categorize their customers. More categories means better service.
In the wider context of society, there are dangers in this reductionistic view of humanity.
It is one thing to devise products that will fit the needs of specific groups of people, but increasingly marketing is focused on creating relationships and knowing individual customers. This involves a kind of surveillance, which is offered by companies like ChoicePoint. But information that may serve well to put you in a company's marketing pigeonholes, particularly when it is purchased by the government for security or other applications that affect you as a citizen. One of ChoicePoint's subsidiaries, DBT, was involved in the disastrous attempt to purge the Florida voting roles of convited felons in the 2000 presidential election. That effort improperly disenfranchised 8,000 voters in an election whose margin of victory was 537 votes.
One Question (Score:2)
It's easy to extrapolate present trends (often to their illogical conclusion). Harder to predict disruptive innovations that result in discontinuities.
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Another Bland Prediction of the Future (Score:1)
So the future is going to have people waving their hands around to get anything done? Sounds like everyone's going to be an amateur symphony conductor. At least the picture phone didn't make it's appearance again. What I can't figure out is why all these companies is people want the future to be FUN, not easy. If it's easy, it's boring!
I also can't figure out why there are so many bleepin speakers in that speaker system. I count 8, 4 of which they could be used as engines on a small plane and the other 4
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Neat.
The Future Ain't What It Used to Be (Score:3, Interesting)
Right, because of course in the future RPE will have been the first company to predict the actual future, not just today's future. They're just different from all the others, just because.
Unless they opened this exhibit in 1986, and predicted a future of cellphones ruining movies, Internet porn replacing TV, theocrats destroying science, and no flying cars. Oh, and a 1986-future-2006 with people still believing "* of the Future" exhibits are real predictions, instead of marketing whatever can't be justified to do in the present.
Lasers (Score:2, Insightful)
Science magazines were all saying "lasers have so many uses and are going to be in every part of our life."
I think that to a degree, these people were right. There are plenty of informational uses (optical media), medical uses (laser eye surgery), among others.
But the reality is that day-to-day life hasn't changed, and we don't wake up and use our laser-spoon to eat our laser-ceral in the morning. Look at the average family, and
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Look ma, I'm using my lazer spoon to eat my lazer cereal!
Munch Munch Munch...
Ow!!! My lazer spoon just cut off my face! Mommy! Mommy!