3D TV, why all the rage?

So it would appear that 3D TV may be the next big thing. But a whole host of articles out there are telling people to stave any compulsion they may have to buy 3D sets. The Orange County Register, for instance, says to put off buying a 3D TV until 2013.  AsiaOne offers a very short pros-vs.-cons analysis. In essence, they argue the TVs require glasses and are crazy expensive. Also, few TV shows are available. But games maybe the next frontier.

This whole debate reminds me of the discussions had during the mid-bubble days of 1999 and 2000. E-commerce was the hot topic. No more brick and mortar. The problem, of course, was that people didn’t have the infrastructure necessary to make true e-commerce a reality, at that time. It’s hard to do a lot of shopping on dial-up. What we should have been doing is encouraging folks to invest in high-speed Internet and then start buying to their heart’s content.

Now, I am not going to rush out and buy a 3D TV. Most people I know are not going to rush out and buy a 3D TV. But I think we should hold off on telling everyone to not buy a 3D TV. I think we should be encouraging the gadget-prone and filthy-rich to invest heavily in 3D TV. Buy it all up. Buy two or three. The more you buy, the more the rest of us will be able to afford it, the more programming will be produced, the more games will be designed for it, and the fewer bugs and kinks we can expect to see in the technology. Who knows, maybe by that time the glasses won’t even be necessary. Just a thought.

A year of living virtually, socially, virutally socially … whatever

So my New Year’s resolution is to post to my blog more regularly than last year.

OK, that’s a bit of a lie. I didn’t actually make a resolution so much as I saw an interesting tidbit, remembered that I had a blog and thought I should probably post about said tidbit.

VatorNews had a little end-of-the-year wrap-up of social media stories. Twitter, Facebook and Bing all made the cut. But the two items on the list of 10 that really stuck with me were the rise of citizen journalism and augmented reality.

As a former newspaper reporter (read old-school journalist), the citizen journalist both intrigues me and scares me. For example, I learned about Michael Jackson’s death from friends via Twitter and Facebook. And the news took on an instantaneously communal, organic feel. Folks started sharing their thoughts and emotions about the news, the man, his music. Critics seized on his troubled personal life and legal troubles. It was so much more than what I could ever have done or even inspired with a 15-incher obit.

But when I learned about Jackson’s death, I scrambled to verify the news with every trusted news source I could. I wondered how many did the same? True citizen journalists get to the story before traditional journalists and get it out even faster. They don’t have any pesky editors or even copy editors to slow them down, which is the problem. So many in the public couldn’t care less who or what is dishing out the info. So the same communal, organic feel that I liked so much could also be characterized as viral, infectious, and even dangerous. So can you stop a bad citizen journalist’s report before it spreads too quickly? Where does one print a correction in the ether?

Augmented reality is interesting simply for the way it is shaping communication. As some researchers have noted, there is a loss of time and space thanks to our mobile-media world. I call you to meet you at a restaurant. I Twitter that I’m going to meet you at the restaurant to everyone who follows me. You call me to find out how far out I am so that you can go ahead and order me a drink. I then call you and let you know that I’m running late because I just bumped into our mutual friend. Our friend is coming too and wants a Coke. So while time and place have a certain impermanence, I would argue that so too then do formality and punctuality. Also, the walls between interpersonal communication and mass communication, between front-of-house impression management and back, between what is personal and impersonal are all fading. I’m not necessarily making a judgment here, determining if this is good or bad. I’m just arguing that it is happening. How many of you have called a boss, client or professor to say you’re running late? How many of you would have done that 10 years ago? Even five years ago?

Virtual reality, the home edition

G4’s Attack of the Show recently paid tribute to Johnny Chung Lee, a researcher for Microsoft and graduate of Carnegie Mellon’s Human Computer Interaction Ph.D. program. Lee is the king of Wiimote mods.

Using innovative DIY approaches, Lee has modified Wii peripherals into finger-tracking devices,

low-cost electronic white boards,

and desktop virtual reality. Yes, that’s right, virtual reality at home via your desktop.

As Attack of the Show thought to add Lee to its own Hall of Fame, so too do I.

Chicago, Chicago …

Rambler Andrew at the Sears Tower overlooking Chicago.

After a short hiatus, I have returned to my blogging ways. Much of my time recently has been devoted to my dissertation, including the proposal defense and subsequent data collection. However, I also took time to visit Chicago for the National Communication Association’s annual conference.

This year’s conference was titled, Discourses of Stability and Change. Much of the “change” referred to can be chalked up to technology’s effects on communication. I listened to numerous presentations that addressed social and mobile media and invoked such names as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and the ubiquitous iPhone.

Several of those same presentations also included some discussions of virtual identity. However, there seems to be developing two distinct facets of this concept. On the one hand, you have typical computer-mediated, text-based impression management, such as what you tell people about yourself on Facebook or Twitter. On the other hand, you have computer-mediated, graphics-based impression management, such as the photos you choose for yourself on Facebook or the avatar you select for yourself in an online game.

At some point, we researchers will have to determine whether we can approach these very different versions of self-presentation with the same theoretical assumptions. I may want people to really like me on Facebook. But I may want people to respect me or even fear me in an online game setting. Thus, the way I present myself may be wildly different. Either way, such questions are rich in research potential.

You in 3-D

The Presence-L Listserv brings this interesting tidbit about research being conducted by the UT Dallas Center for BrainHealth. Researchers are working on  face recognition/emulation avatars. The idea is that the participant can make a face at an avatar, which resembles him or her, and the avatar returns the favor.  This is most helpful for people, such as autistic children, who have difficulty understanding the emotional content of the reactions they often give others.

One wonders though if all participants will understand that they the cause for their avatars’ frowns. Will there be a disconnect between the self and avatar there?