In the Cloud and on the Ground » Future

Where Online and Real Lives Cross

Heidi Trotta — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 21:03:45 +0000

Naming my new (and much improved WordPress site) “In the Cloud”, I remembered this text from http://www.dancinginkproductions.com/ . It describes this special place well, especially the sweet spot where the real and online worlds meet.

The Internet is one virtual world fed by countless tributaries–platforms–that arise and fall and feed into one collective body. Like water, the Internet reflects physical reality but also contains a life of its own. … the intersection of physical and virtual reality.

A number of years ago when I first started at Columbia for my graduate work, life online was examined as if it was an entity all to itself, yet as I finish there, the definition of what is “real” is not so clear or defined.

The subject matter…is not that collection of solid, static objects extended in space but the life that is lived in the scene that it composes; and so reality is not that external scene but the life that is lived in it. Reality is all things as they are. ~ -Wallace Stevens

Still in the process of moving everything over from many resources and blogs …

Interface Design

Heidi Trotta — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 19:11:29 +0000

This stort-story video is an interesting mix of human-computer interface design and future holographic building tools … with a humanistic touch.

Fast Tube by Casper

http://vimeo.com/3365942

Where interface and content meet

Heidi Trotta — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 23:32:03 +0000

I saw a blog post on Technology Trends by Phil Long today that featured this youtube video produced by Microsoft Office Labs that shows how the company envisions the interface between man and machine in 2019. Even though, as Phil mentions, the interfaces remind one of that seen in the movie Minority Report, I do think the topic is facilitating.

As I struggle with faculty and students using some of the more complicated technology in Blackboard, I have to give thought to why mobile technology comes so easily, especially to students. I am convinced it the interface is one of the key issues. The technology within this video is interactive, visual and intuitive as the devices and content intersect. Rarely do I see students or faculty looking at tutorialsL.

http://edtechtrends.blogspot.com/2009/03/new-interface-trends.html

Fast Tube by Casper