zenpundit.com

[ by Charles Cameron — mostly for the non-gamer reader ]
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Grognards and hard-core gamers won’t need this post, but it may be of interest to people like myself who don’t fall into those categories… For those not “watching” the world of games, then, here’s one recent game-promo video, followed by one student exercise in video-making which is not about an actual game mod..

For full impact, view both “full screen”.

This, which illustrates the action in a game you can buy starting this month:

And this, which is essentially a student thought-experiment:

I have no interest in signing up but the social media site Pinterest is the new Twitter.

That is if Twitter was dominated by fans of Julia Child, Martha Stewart and Glamour magazine. Mrs. Zenpundit drew my attention to Pinterest as she is already addicted to “pinning”.

Not much appeal there yet to the part of the population more likely to grow a handlebar mustache, but that does not mean that it’s popularity and influencing effect of Pinterest could not become very significant. I can see a politician or public figure someday going viral on Pinterest due to a faux pas or an image that enrages half the world’s population.

Watch, I give it two years – probably less since the temptation to leverage it during an election year to pull off a negative attack should prove irresistible.

I have been reading about the potential of 3-D printing here and there, particularly at John Robb’s   Global Guerrillas site. It looked hopeful as a technology vector, but not having a tech background myself, it was harder to envision the parameters of potential application and their possible economic impact.

The following short TED talk by Lisa Harouni I found to be a useful intro for the non-engineer. Much of it is illustrated by specific examples:

My first thought, given the low and descending cost of these devices, coupled with increasing sophistication and power is the boon it will be to small to medium sized manufacturers locked into competition with low-cost foreign producers. Transcontinental transport costs are instantly axed from the price while maintaining quality control (something most Chinese manufacturers, for example, have trouble attaining to level demanded by high end customers). It also revolutionizes the “high end” market for customers demanding unusual or specifically customized products.

The second thought is Harouni’s remark that 3-D printing makes possible devices that could not be manufactured in any other way. That’s an affordable, economically transformative, technology put in the hands of a new generation of “garage tinkerers” – the next Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs are out there, somewhere.

My third thought is, that our present elite, who are deeply vested in a crony capitalist ethos, gatekeeping and policies that create economic stagnation while “locking in” their comparative socioeconomic advantage and power as a political class, will eventually look askance at ordinary people having access to this technology.

When lobbyists from fortune 500 companies or foreign countries(!) begin squealing about losing market share to small-fry manufacturers, expect efforts to create regulatory barriers to market entry with 3-D printing in the same spirit that politicians today want to legislatively “roll back” the disruptive effects of unregulated internet access at the behest of the copyright cartel.

3-D printing technology needs to become as widely dispersed as computing itself, in order that not happen.

Heard from John Robb on twitter that author Daniel Suarez, creator of the Daemon sci-fi series that he has a new book coming out.

In Daemon,  a renegade Ai program, “the Daemon” orchestrates and serves a darknet of human agents partly through the medium of augmented reality technology. Glasses were the most typical augmented reality interface with the darknet in the novel and they were just slightly ahead of their time.

Lumus is marketing a similar consumer device, which appears to be reaching the early adapter level with the movement towards stylish, sunglasses, design (as opposed to walking around with giant goggles attached by a plethora of wires to a spaghetti collander-like helmet). The crossover from uber-nerdom to cool kidz demographic is a key milestone.