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http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=6Cf7IL_eZ38&vq=medium

fc

What a flat, sterile world :-)

When the touch screens have killed all buttons, I'll miss them.

I love the feel of a heavy smooth button push. Or the snapping flick of a toggle. I want to feel the button motion on my skin. I want to feel the resistance.

Imagine a guitar would consist of a touchscreen neck. No vibration on the fingers. No physical enjoyment.

Imagine a touchscreen piano. Could you play it without the tactile feedback from the heavy wooden keys under your fingers?

When the world has no buttons anymore, what will the evolution do with the human body?

When Tyrannosaurus decided to stop using arms, they got smaller ...


!-!

Apple is selling "musical instruments" for the iPad, including a guitar and other things.

I couldn't resist trying an iPad guitar out just to see what the heck they had done. I was surprised at how well they had somehow managed to make it sort of behave like a guitar, but was of course appalled at the whole concept of divorcing physical sensation from at least some realities. Somehow this reminded me of inflatable dolls for "personal enjoyment", which I also disapprove of!!!

I saw a science fiction movie recently set in the future, and in this dystopian future everyone was living through avatars and their computers. Their physical avatars interacted and they lived life entirely in a surrogate or second-hand fashion. Nothing was real.

As "progress" progresses, I wonder how much of this movie is coming true while we live? Apparently the banksters are looting the economy faster than we can develop it, though...

Maybe no knobs and switches, but at least you'll have to
scramble your eggs and pour your orange juice by hand !

Actually, the future is already 80 years old: The Theremin!

No touchpad. Just air.

The Theremin was the first Wii* music instrument.

But it's a very difficult instrument. Why? Because it has no body to push on.


i-i


* Not Wii. How is it called? The stuff that works without knobs?

I'm somehow reminded of the ogasmatron from Sleeper....

Hardy Heinlin wrote

But it's a very difficult instrument.

Yes ... very difficult to listen to !

My dad (electrical engineer) rebelled against the lack of tactile sensation, and replaced the light switch on the dining room wall with a gigantic knife switch like in the old Frankenstein movie. It has a 6" handle on contacts that are also about that long.

Hardy Heinlin wrote

Imagine a guitar would consist of a touchscreen neck. No vibration on the fingers. No physical enjoyment.

So?

Hardy Heinlin wrote

When Tyrannosaurus decided to stop using arms, they got smaller ...

That is Lamarckism!

m

Although the glass stuff looks pretty, I wonder whether we are all waiting for a world in which everything everywhere is flashing at you all the time. Is there any visual resting place left?

I also wonder whether all these personalised happy sharing apps are so useful. The technology of glass panels is interesting -- the apps they show, hmmm.

And of course, Star Trek already had this long ago:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LCARS


Jeroen

Will Cronenwett wrote

My dad (electrical engineer) rebelled against the lack of tactile sensation, and replaced the light switch on the dining room wall with a gigantic knife switch like in the old Frankenstein movie.

... and his son loves to work with scalpels.

Interesting family :-)

Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers wrote

Although the glass stuff looks pretty, I wonder whether we are all waiting for a world in which everything everywhere is flashing at you all the time. Is there any visual resting place left?

I also wonder whether all these personalised happy sharing apps are so useful. The technology of glass panels is interesting -- the apps they show, hmmm.

And of course, Star Trek already had this long ago:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LCARS


Jeroen
[

There is an LCARS-like app I considered for my iPad and iPod Touch. It permits downloading all the text (no images) from Wikipedia onto the iPad/iPod so one could have all that stuff with you at all times. I think it was about 5GB or something like that, for (I think) 5 US dollars. I still think about buying it but since then I've mostly filled up my 64 GB of storage with apps, podcasts, and a few movies and music. I've noticed that I don't seem to need to query WIkipedia unless I'm in a wi-fi connected place anyway. I guess I'm used to doing such things in an office-like environment instead of at any time and from any place. People who use their iPhones heavily have no doubt made the transition away from such obsolete thinking!

Fast forward X years and if the Moore's Law exponential growth of storage capacity, etc, continues, we have the same set of issues but with everything multiplied by some large factor.

Stuff expands to consume available resources. Maybe that's the only lesson?!

Phil Bunch wrote

It permits downloading all the text (no images) from Wikipedia onto the iPad/iPod so one could have all that stuff with you at all times.

But the question is, does it also have

DON'T PANIC

printed on it in large friendly letters???
(There is an app for that, I'm sure...)

As long as the answer is 42 you'll be fine.

Jeroen

Just watched the video. Oh life can be so much fun when you're
rich and addicted to consuming *g*

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3EPtUPcs8s&feature=related

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