Most Important Single Development

"The Internet is the most important single development in the history of human communication since the invention of call waiting." - Dave Barry

Indeed.

With the Internet transforming our lives and society now, it is very difficult for us to refute this point. The Internet is developing still, but the way we operate and do things change with its gradual progress. Like how we chat with our friends or family members via online chats even when we're probably sitting side by side, like how we find out more about our friends without asking them just from Facebook and/or Twitter.

But of course, this may well be just the beginning.

In class we were shown video clips of the future of the Internet such as augmented reality glasses, "StarkHUD 2020". Just putting on that pair of glasses, people can travel to anywhere, anytime. Only they are still in the same location of course. It's their eyes that travel. Within that small pair of glasses, information can be provided and people can even see their own transformation into say, Iron Man.

And this is just one example of what the future of the Internet brings us.

There is even the integration of the Internet into television, as can be seen from the Samsung Smart TV commercial. You can "stream music and movies, connect with friends, and everything else you love".

This could well be just one of the trends. In future, as Mr Abel Choy has predicted, there may even be integration of the Internet into radio, text, news, movies, and photos.

Even the television can act as a control centre of the house, no longer requiring the remote control with extremely small buttons.

The gap between the digital world and the physical world may be bridged as well, such as integrating information to our everyday objects, as introduced by Pranav Mistry. We can pinch information onto just a piece of paper, and later on transferring it to our full screen computers.

Or, as a video clip shows, we can now wake up and even check out the latest news using our mirror while brushing our teeth, or chat with just anybody using a counter top. Or copy directions from a big digital screen onto our own device.

I think the future of the internet is too vast; with our current technology, which is developing still, we can create almost anything we want now. I believe the integration of internet into our daily lives is just the beginning; many more incredulous things that we never thought of may be awaiting us.

More Than Just Gaming Addiction

"Virtual reality is a medium, a means by which humans can share ideas and experiences." - Alan B. Craig, Developing Virtual Reality Applications

Since this week's topic is just about anything, I thought I could elaborate on Virtual reality, something my group did for our project.

I shall first begin with its definition, as quoted from dictionary.com: A realistic simulation of an environment, including three-dimensional graphics, by a computer system using interactive hardware and software.

In recent years, virtual reality is gaining much more attention, with newspaper reports of it causing suicides amongst other disastrous impacts. However, virtual reality surfaced as early as the 1960s, with the introduction of the first multi-sensory simulator called Sensorama.

In 1982, the Visually Coupled Airborne Systems Simulator was introduced. It was an advanced flight simulator with an out-the-window view. As we can see, even in its early stages of development, virtual reality was not just targeting at the gaming aspect.

The term Virtual Reality was coined by Jaron Lanier, the father of virtual reality technology. According to Lanier, it was his attempt at distunguishing "between traditional computer simulations and the shared, digital worlds he was trying to create" ("Interview: Jaron Lanier", 1992). But Lanier feels that the term "has been bastardized and hyped up and turned into a whole subcultural craziness".

His view may not entirely be wrong.

After all, we see reports splashed across newspapers about how virtual reality has resulted in murder cases, and even negligence in childcare, leading to a baby's death. "A 22-year-old even burgeoned his mother to death for nagging at him for spending time playing Internet games." (Lim et al., 2011)

However, all these occurred due to long hours of play, resulting in addiction in virtual reality games.

We have to understand that even with these negative impacts, virtual reality has in fact, many other applications in various fields such as medicine, politics, and the military.

But because my group has already touched on the above few categories, I would like to zero in on architecture.

Archiform 3D, an Animation and Rendering studio specializing in Architectural and Landscape scenes, has been creating virtual reality renderings since the early 1990s. The company believes that "virtual reality renderings, visualisation and animations bring new designs to virtual 3D life, allowing you to see everything in its glory as though it was already built" (Archiform3D, 2011). Below are a few pictures from them.

(Photos courtesy of Archiform3D)

The photos show just how real the buildings are, don't they?

Furthermore, I've just learnt from the very same site that there are more than just a few types of virtual reality used in architecture. There's 3D virtual reality, 3D rendered virtual reality, photographic virtual reality, 3D animated virtual reality, real time virtual reality, and holographic reality. (Archiform3D, 2011)

More information can be found at Archiform3D.

Archiform 3D also thinks that "nothing exists in reality to begin with so our artists use any information that they can gather to create a virtual model, one that exists inside a computer" (Archiform3D, 2011).

I quite like this idea because it means people can do almost anything they dream of, which is limited in every sense such as physics. Also, we're often encouraged to think out of the box aren't we? This virtual reality in architecture certainly allows us to work our creativity into reality, albeit in just the virtual world.

Virtual reality indeed, is not just limited to the field of gaming and murder cases, as my shallow brain used to think so. I believe there are more areas that my group hasn't researched on. But virtual reality has proven itself to be a great help in areas such as architecture, medicine, politics and military, just to name a few.

A Shift

"The Internet has encouraged a shift in who creates, distributes and ultimately owns the news."

Journalism is the profession of reporting or photographing or editing news stories for one of the media. Since web 2.0, there has been an increase in citizen journalism.

Now anyone can be a journalist.

You post about an incident that you've witnessed on your blog, you're a citizen journalist.

You post a picture about something else on online forums, you're a citizen journalist.

It doesn't help that most people are holding onto smart phones now. Just a snap or the picture and it's up somewhere - Facebook, Twitter, even Stomp.

With the internet, people are getting an increasing amount of first-hand information. We do not have to wait for the journalists to get to the scene and verify the facts; they are all up on the internet almost immediately.

Citizens can now own their own news.

But it comes to the point when we have to ask ourselves, when is enough, enough?

We take the case of PAP's youngest candidate Ms Tin Pei Ling. Since her public appearance, there has been numerous stories about her on the internet. Some netizens even went as far as retrieving her old photos from the net and uploading them, suggesting that the male in the photos may well be her ex-boyfriend.

Can this be considered journalism at all when there isn't any accuracy? After all, the three main elements of journalism are accuracy, brevity and clarity.

Further, who doesn't have a past? Even if it were true, does it really matter because she's not standing for the prize of a virtuous wife, but a political candidate.

So, when is enough, enough?

With the internet, it seems this question is getting more difficult.