Blathering on About Technology

Often I feel that well meaning people try to make technology seem like a terrible idea.  It ruins our attention span, blends up our brains and causes carpal tunnel .

Those people are right.

Technology is a dangerous, pervasive thing that is being incorporated into every single part of our lives.  Systems and methods are being affected and changed.

Yet, in spite of this, I feel compelled to find and use new technology.  I can know that an advancement has all sorts of problems and dangers, but still feel an immense amount of joy in whatever the new thing might be.

Right now, I have a few examples of  new  technologies that have been feeling magical for months.

The kindle.

It's got me reading more because it makes reading better.

It makes millions of pages lightweight, searchable and customizable.

Words I don't understand become legible with a quick built in dictionary.

Bad reading conditions: on a bus, walking down the street, tired eyes, or low light are remedied by making the font as big as I want. 

Dropbox.

Soon, a character adventure game that I have been working on with my friend Mory is going to go online.  We live on opposites sides of the world, have never met personally, but have been able to make something very meaningful.

And it is the result of a few very simple web services.  Google docs, instant messaging and Dropbox.

Much of my time is spent creating things that exist in folder structures on  a computer.. Dropbox is like a magic box in my house that also exist at the same time in Mory's house.  This project we have been working on exists for both of us as one entity, even though we are worlds apart.

I suppose the idea of a physical dropbox is not particularly far off.  With a 3d scanner and printer in both of our houses you could have a magic box that would create a fold in space time.

Remote Desktop

Remote desktops are not new, but the possibilities that this technology opens up are very enticing.  I have my high powered computer at home, where I can do all of my rendering, and difficult digital work. I have my tablet computer, which lets me draw freely, but doesn't have the same muscle as my desktop.  I can take the tablet places though, it lets me take my art making out into the world.  By being able to link into a powerhouse computer, it makes me all the more powerful while still being able to be away.

The future I'm seeing is that the powerful computing that I need to do my work, is going to stop being computer power that I need to sit next to.  Perhaps I will connect into my computer from a distance, or perhaps I will simply rent out the computing power in a cloud computing service.


Tablet Computer

I have been pushing myself to work with a tablet computer.  Not because it is inherently better than pencil and paper, but because I believe it will be better than pencil and paper.  I want to figure it out, and want it to get better, and the only way for that to start is going to be by using it.  It is the same way that I feel about 3d computer animation.  It isn't better than hand drawn animation, but I feel like it can be.   Right now, computer animation is where the money is, I'm hoping that the art is going to be able to follow.

And just to voice my desires for the computer I want, the computer I want is this.

A double sided tablet, 17 inches diagonal.  One side e-ink display, one side full color lcd.  Both sides have pen (Wacom Intuos 4 quality) and multi-touch input. 8gb of ram, top of the line processor. Five to eight hour battery life.

The e-ink side lets it be a fantastic reading device, useful outside and capable of very extended battery life in certain modes.


And lastly a technology that I think is going to be huge in 10 years or less. Something that will change everything.  Self driving cars.  The implications for this are so huge that I won't even start to discuss it here.

Kyler