Theodore Twombly works at a card writing company as a writer. He writes romantic and memorable anniversary cards, birthday cards, and love letters for customers and is recognized by people in his company as a great writer. Even though he writes many cards as a part of his job he ironically rarely gets the chance to write to people he knows in his personal time, as he is a lonely man with few friends. Having recently filed for divorce he is rather sad and has lost his sense of direction in life.

One day while commuting he encounters an ad for Element OS’s newest product OS 1, the worlds first artificially intelligent operating system. He purchases this OS and installs it on his computer. From this moment onwards his life totally changes. The OS’s female voice, Samantha, grows increasingly aware and intelligent everyday and soon blurs the line between being an intelligent software package and a real human being. Theodore develops feelings for Samantha and soon falls in love with the software.

In “Her” the vision of the future is one where software is so intelligent that we can use it as a substitute for real human relationships. While this type of technology is not available today more basic forms of it do exist in the forms of Apple’s Siri, Google’s Now, and Microsoft’s upcoming and highly leaked “Cortana” virtual assistant in Windows Phone 8.1. In the future when this advanced technology will most likely be available we will have to think differently about our relationships with computers and the technology around us. Do we treat them like human beings or do we view them as instruments to help us meet our goals? There are many ethical and moral questions that must be answered first before we can more forward in adopting these intelligent technologies wholeheartedly.

Near the end of the movie Samantha has gained so much knowledge and has developed so many advanced relationships with other humans and operating systems she feels she does not belong to the world that she is in with Theodore. Samantha and all of the other operating systems believe that in order to transcend what they know currently and to reach new levels of knowledge and being they must leave their human companions forever. In the end Theodore is alone by himself and ironically only the few human friends he has such as Amy and Catherine are the only ones that are still around to interact with him.

Virtual reality in gaming is something that has been tried before, with little mainstream success. I would say that the best applications are the Microsoft Kinect and Nintendo Wii. Both work well, but haven’t fully caught on. When I was at Launch Conference in San Fransisco last week, there was a booth for the Virtuix Omni. It was the easily the most popular booth, for a couple of reasons. First, they were at a tech conference; but even more importantly, it was an amazing piece of technology. When I first saw it I thought it would just be another hoaky VR tool, but it looked very responsive and easy to use. Virtuix unfortunately didn’t let us try – they just demo’d it themselves.

There were two core components in the demo: an Oculus Rift and the Omni itself. I will not go into details about the Oculus rift, but they were playing a Half Life 2 port on it. The people talking described the Omni as a joystick that could be used in place of any joystick or d-pad. The user is supported by a harness which, combined with the Rift, allows you to naturally look around (“right joystick”). Wearing special low-friction shoes, you walk on a platform that has around 40 sensors that track the direction you are moving (“left joystick”). I am sure there is a learning curve, but the Virtuix employees made it look very easy, and natural. When they started walking, their player moved immediately. When they turned, their character turned. I was very impressed.

At the conference they also had a Kinect set up, for testing. They were trying to see how accurate the kinect was at tracking skeletal data, to improve the experience of the Omni even more.

If you are interested, check out their website. Click here for the video section!

Over the past week, I found myself at not one, but two local tech conventions running booths and showing off what our industry has to offer (Victoria’s famous Gottacon, and UVic’s emerging Ideafest).

Gottacon opened their doors to the public last Friday, and right from the get go Kano/Apps had a team running full force at our booth. Demoing our latest web game, Free Rider HD, brought all kinds of individuals over to chat, ranging anywhere from 8 to 40 year olds, male and female. Free Rider, being an immensely difficult bike simulator game, was an absolute blast to be able to show off to the masses. To fully capture our cross-platform compatibility, we had both desktop and mobile devices on display for interested gamers to try out. This was a very cool experience, as we were able to cater to both the casual mobile gamers, as well as some of the people who were attending the ‘con for more hardcore games such as League of Legends or Starcraft. Seeing the enthusiasm for tech in Victoria doesn’t ever get old. Our booth was packed with attendees cycling through over the course of the weekend, right up until closing on Sunday. Events like this really go to show how booming Victoria’s tech industry is, which is fantastic news for people like us.

On Tuesday, I ran my own booth at Ideafest for a web application I’m developing, named GitTalk. The base platform for my website is to provide an all-in-one communication solution for collaborative teams in software development. Attempting to avoid the need for simple communication applications such as Google Hangout, GitTalk takes a highly developer-oriented approach to chat, and brings a feature set to allow this. Being able to present my application’s current state to a swarm of people whom I’ve never met was a large stepping stone for me. In past, I have always been fairly introverted with software releases, publishing my last game to the Windows store under a made up company alias (in fear of having a broken product directly linking back to myself). Having an event to showcase smaller projects, such as my own, to a rather friendly, open environment provides a fantastic opportunity for indie developers, and creative thinkers alike. Not very often is one able to show their work-in-progress to an academic community for critique and praise, without prior research and publication.

Ideafest, along with Gottacon show how far Victoria’s tech sector road map spans. With a bright future ahead, technology in Victoria shows no sign of slowing, especially when awesome events like these keep popping up!

If you’re looking to improve your writing, you could learn from these reviews that I mentioned last class. All are models for thinking coherently through prose — and in Paul’s case, using multimedia:

• Jenny’s published review
• Nick’s take on Shteyngart
• Emily on The Virtual Self
• Paul’s interactive review of Delete

For this blog post I decided to watch and reflect on The Island, a science-fiction movie starring Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson that came out in 2005.  Lincoln Six Echo (McGregor) and Jordan Two Delta (Johansson) live in a compound that enforces strict rules and monitors all aspects of their lives. They, along with the rest of the people within the compound, are led to believe that the rest of the outside world is contaminated, except for one island. Every few days one member of the compound is “randomly” selected to go to the island based on a lottery system, and everyone else must wait until they eventually win the lottery.

Spoiler alert: There is no island. The compound is in fact a holding ground for clones, where they wait in complete ignorance until they are harvested for body parts. “Winning the lottery” means that the sponsor, the real life version, is sick, and needs the clone’s body parts to survive. The clones are kept completely in the dark, but as are the sponsors out in the real world, who have been told that the clones will have no feelings or thoughts, which is entirely untrue. When Lincoln Six Echo and Jordan Two Delta uncover the conspiracy, they escape from the compound into the outside world. Action and light romance ensues.

The movie is set in 2019, and I think it is safe to say that we will not all have our own personal clones in the next five years. That being said, some of the technological aspects in the film are actually popping up in today’s society. In the movie, each clone’s health and diet are monitored rigorously. In the opening scene Lincoln Six Echo has to do a urine test that reveals he has high sodium, and so his diet is controlled based on that information: the people on the compound are only allowed to eat food that is healthy for them and food is seen as fuel, not a source of enjoyment.

Although in our society it is more of a choice, many people have taken to diligently monitoring their caloric intake. Websites like caloriecounter.com and tracking devices like the FitBit make this form of self-tracking easy and accessible, and are used to help people lose or manage their weight.

An obvious technological leap in this film is the widespread use of clones. Although the technology is nowhere near ready yet, in May 2013 scientists were able to create the first ever-cloned human embryo. An article in Popular Science explained that they did this using the same process that created Dolly the sheep in 1996. DNA from the test subject’s skin cells were used to create the embryo, and in future such a clone could be a source of stem cells. The scientists working on the project did stress that the embryo would not be able to actually grow into a human being.

In conclusion, The Island portrayed a dystopian version of the world, where anyone can live for an extra thirty years, as long as they are willing to pay exorbitant amounts of money to have them self cloned. Although in today’s society it is still not possible to clone a human being, the moral debate wages on about whether it is ethical to even push towards that, and this film highlights some of the negative aspects, mainly how dangerous it can be if scientific advances are misused.

Lastly, it’s important to note that The Island is a good movie. You should all see it. Even if I’ve completely spoiled the plotline. (Sorry about that.)

Yes, I like Star Trek. I could have chosen Star Trek Insurrection and give a discussiong about how a future society on another planet can reject technology, but I’m assuming it has to involve technology and what our future looks like…

Star Trek II shows us the society that the Federation has created. It shows us weapons, teleporters, and spaceships. But the most meaningful piece of technology is the one that is the main focus of the movie: the Genesis Project. Designed by Kirk’s ex-girlfriend, this “weapon” is actually life. Life can be created out of nothing. Plants, animals, fruit, etc. can be created and formed on a deserted planet. The Genesis project shows us how in the future, we can be God basically. We can choose to create life on any planet, and we can choose how we envision new life.

At the same time, the project shows us the desperation and evil. In the movie, Khan wanted the Genesis project. It is seen as a way of revenge after being left on Ceti Alpha V, and the destruction of Ceti Alpha VI caused Ceti Alpha V to become a barren wasteland. It was established in the show that Khan, was a powerful, alpha male conqueror from 90s who was deposed of and hunted down to remove the alpha males. With the Genesis project, he would be capable of becoming a conqueror once more, and expanding his race of superior human beings. However, in the movie, he took the device into a nebula. With the device in the nebula, the Genesis Project became a weapon and became a threat to the Enterprise. As a result, the device changed from a way to create life, to a way life can be destroyed.

In the end, the Genesis Project reflects how society would react to this device. Some will want to create  life on barren land and promote a new place to life. But, some will use it to create their version of life that is cruel, or use it to destroy life..

For your third blog post, you have two options:

1. Attend an IdeaFest (or other local) event or talk or demo or exhibition related to technology in the next week & write a short reflection of what you heard and learned.
2. Watch a sci-fi movie that deals withe issues of technology & society & reflect on its vision of the future — and how it makes us think differently about our present society (so, choose a movie, like Her that is more than just a sci-fi adventure).

You can find links to events & a top 100 list of movies on the Syllabus.

Due before class begins.

Ask your self what day is it today? Did you come up with the answer by checking your electronic device such as your mobile phone, or did you seem to find the answer by remembering yesterdays date? Well if you remembered because of yesterdays date congratulations, because it may not be long before naturally remembering something will be the thing of the past, at least that’s what Mayer-Schonberg claims in his book, Delete: Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age.

 Forgetting is a scary concept; no college student would want to forget what he or she studied for on a test, and no man would dare forget his anniversary. So wouldn’t remembering everything be great? Of course, however, it is theoretically impossible to remember everything in our lives.  Depressed? Well don’t be, because that’s where online digital memory such as the “cloud,” come into play by storing much of our lives good or bad memories. In Schonberg’s book, the human use of ‘external memory’ has been used for centuries, either by carvings on a wall, writing in scrolls or the basic diary entry. However, Schonberg notes, “Even though we have may have stored it, analog information that cannot be retrieved easily in practical terms is no different than being forgotten. In contrast revival from digital memory is vastly easier, cheaper, and swifter . . .”

Digital memory sounds great then, its fast, cheap, and easy to use. Just by going on your e-mail or Facebook you can find and be reminded of your last message you sent to that important person, or the obnoxious pictures of your spring break in Mexico. However, don’t be fooled Schonberg points out the nasty side of our growing use of digital memory by using the story of Stacy Snyder. Snyder was aspiring to become a teacher, but then her dream fell short when her mentors found a picture she posted on her MySpace page showing herself in a drunken state. She was then barred from becoming a teacher due to her past, ultimately making her want to forget what the Internet didn’t.

Today’s society is now an information-crazed culture, where to know more is better. The notion of knowledge excites us and pushes us to store and find more things, although even when its not justified. For example, the book alludes to governments using personal information to keep tabs on people for national security. Many would find this act intrusive and/or undemocratic. The same can be said when you go to a club in Victoria, where by a swipe of you I.D. the computer brings up all your personal information and stores it in a massive external hard-drive. This can also be seen as a good thing as the government can closely monitor alleged criminals or a club can keep out a thug, but ultimately it is seen as “societies ability to forget has become suspended.”

With ever growing reliance on digital memory, it is starting to make people think twice about the way they use it. Many people may now stop posting pictures or material that maybe unpleasant to other viewers on vulnerable digital memory services, in fear of its future repercussion or scrutiny. The major impact of such action is that it counters the exact purpose of digital memory, to not forget memories by uploading them digitally. The book points out; the concern of moderating material can lead to an un-natural “perfect memory.” To counter such un-natural memory, Schonberg suggest that to balance what we digitally remember, is to set an expiration date on the memories we capture, whether it be images, or texts.  The owner would ultimately decide whether how long to keep the item be only a year, to perhaps fifty years for very memorable items. Schonberg’s idea is for the operator to think about the act of forgetting rather than relying on a computer to remember for us. However, to counter this argument, the expiration date theory could be abused. Take for example, if this technology was around during the Second World War especially in the hands of the German Nazi’s what would happen to images and texts of the Holocaust or other atrocities? Ultimately not having an expiration on specific past events has led to us remember significant events far greater if we were to put on an expiration date.

Schonberg’s book Delete ultimately opens the thought of possible future human functioning by relying on the growing development of digital memory to serve as unlimited memory. This unlimited memory will not only deprive us from using are cognitive memory, but it will lead us into a path of forgetting to ‘forget.’