The rise of real-time

So, this isn’t massively insightful. But I’ve had a thought about a lot of the new technologies that are being adopted. There seems to be a constant move toward real-time computing. That is, there seems to be a massive growth computing techniques that are based on being used in real time.

By this, I’m defining real-time as you using the tool to accent your life at the moment of use. This, for me, differs from tools that you use to help make sense of a past event or help with a future one.

Some examples

Google Docs

They recently redid their collaborative writing tool to allow for 50 people to edit the document at the same time. That’s some serious real-time usage. Writing a document with a team doesn’t have to take place over days by bouncing docs back and forth through emails.

Facebook / Twitter

So these aren’t entirely real-time, but they do let you interact with your friends in close to it. At least, compared with more “traditional” forms of interacting — phone calls, face-to-face visits, or (gasp) written letters. Twitter more than Facebook in this case.

Smartphones

Even more than laptops and iPads, smartphones give you computing power that you use on-demand. Using Google Maps while walking/driving is real time (whereas using Google Maps beforehand is not). Throw in augmented reality and you’ve got some really cool real-time computing.

Compstat

So this one breaks away from the personal computing realm. Police departments (the big ones at least) are moving in force to compstat, also known as crime specific policing. This is where the departments maintain a near-real time map of crimes and deploy officers to the problem areas.

It’s incredibly successful, and the police managers just love it. Real time computing from an organizational perspective.

Yeah, not massively insightful. But I find it interesting that we’re moving away from using computers intermittently, or to prep for the future / understand the past. They’re moving toward a point where computing is fully embedded in our lives, and more specifically our constant stream of actions.

Virtual Reality Revisited: Social Media (part 3)

This is part 3 in a series of posts that look to revisit the concept of virtual reality in a web 2.0 / social media / cloud computing Internet. Part 1 is here. And part 2 is here. In this particular post, I want to talk about the ways that social media play into the concept of virtual reality.

When I first started playing around with the idea for these posts, I had recently demoed Facebook and Twitter for my parents (my mom had just created an account). When I talked about how Facebook allowed you to make friends that you never actually met in real life, I described them as “virtual world” friends. My father took to the idea, but argued that they were an extension of the physical friends and didn’t entirely exist in the virtual world (since they were generally made through connections with physical friends). And that got me thinking about how the physical world had melded so well with the virtual.

Facebook

And Facebook may be the best example of that. I’m thinking of my undergrad students – and the fact that they immediately log onto Facebook when they walk into the computer classroom before class. But it’s what they do on Facebook that gets me thinking about virtual reality.

They develop an identity inside Facebook that may or may not correspond with their identity in the physical world. Very often their Facebook identities are much more outgoing, brazen, and frank than their in-class ones (though I can’t speak to their out-of-class identities).

And they maintain friendships with people they would never see again outside of Facebook. The majority of them keep in touch with their friends from high school that they won’t see for another 22-24 years (at the high school reunion).

And they develop new friendships with people they’ve never physically met. These tend to be friends of friends, or people in their networks (such as people in the Texas Tech network). Now, they may one day meet these Facebook friends, but that’s definitely questionable.

All three of these features strike me as remarkably “virtual” when it comes to discussing reality. Having an identity that is distinct from the physical one is a hallmark trait of virtual realities. And developing relationships and communities that don’t exist in the physical world is another. But I’m really hard pressed to make any kind of argument that the virtual world of Facebook is disconnected from the physical world. Rather, my students exist in something of a blend between the two. One feeds the other. The virtual world of Facebook is made stronger because of the physical relationships. And the physical world is made stronger because of the virtual relationships. The line between virtual and physical is really blurred.

I’m thinking to a panel I sat in at CCCC2010 a couple weeks back. The presenter was talking about charity groups that let you “adopt” African children. World Vision is one she referenced. Child Fund International is another. An interesting twist that was highly effective as a fund raiser for these groups is to make a Facebook community for the African villages. Apparently these groups will set these villagers up with their own Facebook groups that others from around the world can join (here’s Child Fund International). This gives the villagers more of an identity and leads to more action to help them.

Now, if you’re bonding with African villagers through a Facebook group, will you ever physically meet them? Most likely not. So, they exist for you only in a virtual sense. Yet, they aren’t simply constructs in a computer program. Rather, they have a physical presence just like you. It is only the relationship that is virtual.

YouTube

And much the same phenomenon happens with YouTube viral videos. There’s the new trend of YouTube stars popping up in which real individuals gain a virtual stardom. These individuals (after having posted some silly video, usually) develop their own fan base and followers and garner millions of views.

David after Dentist is a great example of this. David even has his own merchandising line now!

Numa Numa is another one – a guy who (as I understand) initially tried to hide from his new found Internet fame before embracing it

Now, these are both videos of real people that gain virtual fame, but there are virtual “people” who do much the same. The Dancing Baby, a 3D animation, was popular back in the 1990s. And those who play World of Warcraft will be intimately familiar with Leeroy Jenkins, a virtual character who has spawned a gaming legend amongst the flesh and blood players.

So, if we’re trying to figure out the relationship between the virtual reality of YouTube and the physical reality of the people looking at computer screens, it’s very hard to make much of a division. Indeed, even the “blurred line” analogy is a bad one because of the interconnectedness of the two worlds. David after Dentist’s physical and virtual existences are so intimately tied that they’re nearly impossible to separate. Numa Numa made a resurgence online because of physical world pressure. The separation between virtual and physical realities is more than just blurred – it’s nearly gone.

Augmented Reality

And that brings me to a trend that as of this post is recently emerging – augmented reality. As explained by the good people at Common Craft, it’s a way to use smartphone technology to provide extra information about the physical world. There’s an Android OS app called Layar that will take a real-time capture from your phone’s camera and present you with content from the Internet about what you’re looking at. The screen provides you with the camera’s view (namely, the buildings and geography you’re pointing at) and overlays it with content bubbles that tell you more about what you’re seeing.

Right now this technology is in its infancy, as everything I’ve seen is just Wikipedia-like factoids. But it has interesting potential as a way to garner restaurant reviews, find your way if you’re lost, and provide a kind of assisted tour in museums.

I just love this term, though. All of the blendings I’ve discussed happen asynchronously. Facebook relationships, YouTube stars, and literary escapes (see last week’s post) all develop over time. At any one moment, you’re clearly dealing with either the virtual or the physical world. But this takes that concept and makes them synchronous. You are interacting with both the virtual world and the physical at the exact same time. And that takes the line between the two and throws it right out the window (to blend many metaphors into one).

I wonder if there will be an augmented reality version of YouTube. I could point my phone’s camera at someone and see all of the social media postings she’s made and that have been made about her. It would be a great way to figure out if that guy in the office down the hall really is the Numa Numa guy.