Minority Report is Real

"More Forwards Please"

This clip is interesting in its conception of "progress" as manifest by robot conciousness. Frankly, I've marveled over this intrepretation of smartness, as it implies that an exact imitation of our human physical prowess is indicitave of some sort of real value. I find this argument about as compelling as one that posits that Gary Kasparov is the pinnacle of human intelligence...or that SATs are a good measure of academic promise.

C-3P0 becomes a Nurse

Despite the fact that the human form is extremely ill suited to mechanical immitation, the expecation that robots will take human form has compelled a generation of robot builders to fashion their brilliance into human form. 3P0 was played by a trained british actor, yet we continue to seek robot humanism. 

Star Trek Communicator -> to -> Motorola Startac Phone

The first in a series we'll be doing on sci-fi film inspired devices and computer interfaces that set public expectations for product - priming the market.

Star Trek Communicator

Motorola Startac Phone

Headspace: 3D Mindmapping for the iPhone

Headspace is an interesting, well executed, $1.99 iPhone app which comes from an interesting place.  Flatblackfilms are also the creators of the films A Scanner Darkly, Waking Life and the software used to create them.  As an avid mindmapper & 3D animator, I've been looking for a 3D mindmapping program for many years.  Didn't expect to see one on the iPhone first.

Haven't tested it enough to critique it's overall value and usability.  But it is doing two significant things with the 3rd dimension right of the bat.  One, it allows you to collapse children bubbles into a stack, a simple, effective use of the 3rd dimension for information.  Then, it makes extensive use of the iPhone's finger gestures to navigate in 3D, pinching to zoom, dragging two fingers to rotate, etc.  And in keeping with the name of this blog, dragging mindmap bubbles around the screen feels very much like a miniature Minortity Report interface.  

Finally, this is an application that allows you to visualize your information, in this case, your quick ideas & notes. Then, it also exports mindmaps made with Freemind, the open source mindmap software. So it addresses all of our key questions and provides a widely available, substantial exploration.

I'll be fascinated to see how it evolves.