Project Natal and the approach of HCI

This is a response to the following article: http://tinyurl.com/q2ovk5

Nothing is wrong with the approach, I think. Natal has presented several paradigm shifts that have been inevitable and long coming: the removal of the divide between the physical world and the digital world. For starters, Microsoft presented Natal as being able to recognize real world objects, esp. facial recognition. The scanning in of the skateboard is a perfect example. People lead digital lives as well as physical ones, and we love it when the two become one.

Couple this with body-contact devices such as what Sony and Nintendo have presented, and we have a real opportunity bring accuracy as well as generality to the computer experience. If you want tactile sensation, then pick up the object. If you just want to choose a movie or try on a dress, then Natal is far more intuitive. The point isn't to throw away the controller, its to remove the seams between activities.

Games are about immersion, and I think the Natal paradigm has the oppertunity to really move interactive computing away from the screen. People shouldn't have to be "at the computer" or the TV screen to be able to interact with computers and use those resources. I should be able to stand at my oven and ask for information on my food, or say "set a timer for 10 minutes" without thinking about being at the computer. I should be able to use the resources seamlessly, as tools for enhancing life activities instead of being a goal in themselves.

Natal has a strong future, not only as a game play platform, but as the first of a category: immersive and intuitive computing interfaces. The next step for computing is to make it invisible, therefore making it eminently usable. The future of human-computer interaction lies in removing the boundaries between digital and human, so people use these tools without thinking, as part of their everyday lives.

Surfs Up

I think surfers have it way too easy. I think they are doing the same thing physicially that we are all trying to do (and failing to understand) metaphorically.

Living itself takes energy; it takes energy to move, to do, to eat, to sit, stand and walk (not to mention run). But unlike much of the universe I have been given a gift; I can create. I can independently change the universe in any way I desire. This difference seperates me from the rock, which has no choice in entire existance. I'm not like the quark, which must be bound up in its group. I'm not even the tree, which must stay rooted in the wind. I am the thing I call I, which can alter and affect reality. The catch is the exhibition of any action requires energy to be spent, which sounds like a tiring existance! So how can I think that life isn't one big burden, subject to the kind of demoaning that occurs when one ponders metaphysical implications of entropy?

Well, Surfers have figured it out. Despite the fact that doing so is exhausting, painful, and seemingly impossible, they go out every day and try to catch that wave. And when they do, the energy that is felt pushes them forwards physically and experentially. And if the unique, awesome part of me that makes me me is the ability to create, then if I can find (and ride) waves of creative energy, I will be a bit closer to that elusive yet universally desired state of happiness.

The surfers have it easy, since they are given this answer, right there in the wave.

A first act of Pullulating Remembrance

Last night (or rather this morning) I had another dream: This one was one of those 'I'm so close to waking up in the morning I'm nearly conscious therefore almost lucid' dreams. You know the kind. In it, I was acting a solo part for the entirety of Act 1 of a 2 Act play. During the act I didn’t move much, staying mostly to stage right, and I had a weird leather mask as a costume, a leather mask that was the semblance of one of PeGo's abstract clay sculptures -- the wiry, 'candleholder' kind that seems like a two-dimensional coral just realized it was, in fact, a 3D pufferfish. I went backstage for the entire second act, in which two people were on stage, while I talked to one of the backstage people (strangely, there was only one I could see or experience) about something or other, the usual just-off-stage exultations that actors share when they are not rushing to get ready for another part of the play.

After curtain call, (which didn't seem to actually be part of the dream, instead the play just seemed to end) I went out to the audience, to talk to them, to mingle. My usual fear of sociality contrasting with a desire to be among the peoples overtook me, and I noticed an old mentor among the audience. JeTr -- who ran the theatre, and was the only paid employee of the entire company -- is (and probably always will be) a person I revere and admire, and thus I went down to talk to him. After waiting patiently for a minute or two for him to get done with a conversation with a person sitting next to him, he turned to me, and I asked him what he thought of the play. He clearly did not recognize me, despite a couple of years of working together (not strongly, but intermittently, and he had always taken an interest in my well being, it had seemed) and said "I really didn't know what it was about!" to which I responded, abashed, "I'm not certain; I don't write the stuff, I just perform it."

I walked away, feeling sorry for myself that my theatrical role model did not have a clue who I was even after all of these years, and then realized I was still wearing the mask. How would he have been able to recognize me? So I tore it off, but it was too late. He was nowhere to be found.