A Holographic Future

Often going hand in hand with design, especially graphic design, is technology. While I try and poke my head out into the real world every few days to avoid complete nerd status, I love new technology. This post may seem like a laugh to some at first, but the reality is that the pace of technology is extremely aggressive, and things we see in classic sci-fi movies might be a lot closer than you think.

I attended a workshop/seminar at California State University, Sacramento this Spring, featuring guest speaker Hugh Dubberly, an information designer, of Dubberly Design. The topic of the lecture was looking at what will come next in design, where he hit several points all focusing on "augmented reality," or blurring the lines between the real and the virtual world. He sited several issues such as - sensors being used to proliferate and interact with each other, huge amounts of data being collected and analyzed, mobile platforms being opened up to expose new territory for mobile web development, and the convergence of video with other media. All of this makes me think of (I hate to site this movie just because Tom Cruise is such a cheeseball, but...) Minority Report and their creative vision of the interactive virtual reality.

I came across a site that talks about a project that Forbes magazine asked frog design to do which reminded me of the Hugh Dubberly lecture, "to think about the current state of computing, how we might experience it 10 years from now and, perhaps most importantly, how we might make the transition into these possible futures." Pretty amazing.

Another relevant video is that of Johnny Lee, a guy who plays with the concept of interactive 3D on your home tv, using the Wii controller. Definitely worth checking out! (Skip to about 2:45 if you don't care how it works and just want to see the effect.)

JB