Prometeus - The Media Revolution

Prometeus Media Revolution: Future Vision on Digital Media in 2050: A Critical Analysis

The video below called Prometeus Media Revolution is a thought-provoking vision on the future of digital media until 2050. There are some powerful ideas in here. Here are my comments and musings based on this 5 minute video:

• Be all you can be (Man = God); here I miss the strong interrelationships between digital media, biotech, nanotech and cognitive neuroscience. More importantly, I miss (the importance of) the notion of Augmented Reality/Mixed Reality/Google Earth in this video
• Multiple identities and avatars -> more empathy & more effective communication as well as more self awareness/identity awareness (intrinsic motivation and unique capabilities)
• Sharing of memories and processes -> more productivity and more empathy. We already see this happening right now with partial solutions like Clutzr
• The movie Abre Los Ojos / Vanilla Sky resonates strongly with the latter part in the video (virtual dreaming versus your real life)
• The vid is about the rise of the Gift Economy (Kevin Kelly) and rise of Creative Commons (Lessig)
• Advertisement becomes information (not propaganda), comparison and experience. Here I miss key concepts like attention, relevancy, intention(s), trust and permission based/opt-in. I do really like the idea of Content Creators producing their own advertising/commercials. Powerful but inside-out, not recipient driven !
• I like the idea of Personal Agents delivered by Google due to its link with Web 3.0/Semantic Web
• I also love the idea of reliving history episodes as a participant/active agent -> very high impact and emotional as well as educational value due to its immersiveness
• Furthermore, the Spirit theme resonates with me strongly as a result of my posts on Transformation, Spirituality, Identity and Authenticity (Identity, Authenticity and Creativity as reinforcing forces in Web 2.0 and Web 3.0). However, I wonder if it will be possible in any time to convey and transfer feelings based on lifelogging materials like in Spirit in this video. What I miss is the value and possibility of Dreaming as a source of new virtual worlds and experiences. I believe we don't have to travel outer space as they increase our Places repetoire in virtuality. We have our hands full living out our continuously evolving personal dreams in my view. That is endless
• I don't believe in 'Totems' on the street for printing purposes. This will be personal/mobile/integrated, if any ;-) Papers can get lost, digital stuff can't
• Digital terrestial won't be abandoned due to the implications for the mobile TV revolution (e.g., the impact of technologies like DVB-H and DMB)
• "The media arena will consolidate"; hmmm, yes and no. The Long Tail will always be active, especially since the user generated content craze will intensify and broaden to collective peer production results. With the advent of LIVE mobile webcasting (ComVu, Kyte, Mogulus) we will witness an increase social content consumption relative to the market content consumption. Additionally, I don't buy evil scenarios with 1 company dominating the whole internet (like Google). Why ? Companies with too much power have always been dethroned by the masses as they embrace more benign competitors or develop their own (open source peer produced) alternatives. However, the current huge investments by Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Amazon data centers point in the direction as shown in the video below.
• I totally agree with the idea of Knowledge Flow instead of statis output(s)

Digital art

Picture produced by Drawing Machine 2

Digital art is any art in which computers played a role in production or display of the artwork. Such art can be an image, sound, animation, video, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, videogame, web site,algorithm, performance or gallery installation. Many traditional disciplines are now integratingdigital technologies and, as a result, the lines between traditional works of art and new media works created using computers has been blurred. For instance, an artist may combine traditional painting with algorithm art and other digital techniques. Often, the medium itself is considered the artwork. As a result, defining computer art by its end product can thus be difficult. Nevertheless, this type of art is beginning to appear in art museum exhibits.

Comic book artists in the past would generally sketch a drawing in pencil before going over the drawing again with India ink, using pens and brushes. Magazine illustrators often worked with India ink, acrylics or oils. Currently, an increasing number of artists are now creating digital artwork.

Digital artists do, simply, what centuries of artists have always done by exploring and adopting a culture's new technology toward the making of a personal imagery. In doing so the culture is also reflected in the artwork as is the artist's personal vision. As our culture becomes increasingly digitized, digital artists are leading the way in exploring and defining this new culture. Digital Artists use a medium that is nearly immaterial, that being binary information which describes the color and brightness of each individual pixel on a computer screen. Taken as a whole an image consisting of pure light is the feedback devise that tells an artist what is being made and simultaneously stored on the computer's hard drive. Digital Artists employ many types of user interfaces that correspond to the wide variety of brushes, lenses or other tools that traditional artist use to shape their materials. Rather than manipulating digital code directly as math, these electronic brushes and tools allow an artist to translate hand motions, cutting and pasting, and what were formerly chemical dark room techniques into the mathematical changes that effect the arrangement of screen pixels and create a picture.

Digital Art is created and stored in a non-material form on the computer's memory systems and must be made physical, usually in the form of prints on paper or some other form of printmaking substrate. In addition, digital art may be exchanged and appreciated directly on acomputer screen in gallery situations or simultaneously in every place on the globe with access to the web. Being immaterial has its advantages and with the advent of high quality digital printing techniques a very traditional long lasting print of this artwork can also be produced and marketed.