The Future of Graphics Tablet.

According to Moore’s Law, “since the invention of the integrated circuit [...] the number of transistors [...] placed on an integrated circuit [is] doubling approximately every two years.” (Moore’s Law, 2009) This means that we only have about ten to twenty years before we reach fundamental limits of miniaturization at an atomic level. With the computers getting smaller, the demand for big and bulky input devices with decrease, raising the importance of holographic and laser input devices. We have laser keyboards already.

I called my technology that will take on the role of a graphic tablet in 2059 a Digital Immersion Module or DIM. It is a device consisting of two parts: wearable part, a glove (Manipulator) and a cylindrical object, no more than 3 inches in radius, the H-Projector with unlimited power supply. This device can be used by anyone. DIM will allow creative people to create and manipulate high complexity holographic objects in real time in real world, at the same time making them tangible and realistic, as they can inherit the qualities and properties of other objects. When operating the DIM, the user will have the access to various pallets for adjusting object’s properties in a similar way a painter is holding his tablet.  In more places the DIM is used, the richer are its pallets and object properties tables get, as it learns from things surrounding the work area. After the initial creation and a small rendering process are complete, the object is ready for display or further animation.

One of the milestones in developing of DIM was the inspiration of a little girl Sati from a movie Matrix: Revolution, released in 2003. She was able to paint colourful sky scenery at the end of the movie. This and many similar examples continue to inspire artists to create beautiful virtual worlds, where people would escape simply because it is so unlike the reality. So the mission is to bring those people back to reality. Another key element that played in favour of development of the DIM was the continuous price drop on Wacom products after the year of 2009, which resulted in the technology of graphic tablets being available to everyone. Yet, it still stays within the interest of a small group of people, who mainly interested in design, painting and engineering. In 2015 Wacom Co., Ltd. is on the brink of bankruptcy. The next year, the merge of funds with Holomaniac Ltd. saves both companies from the bankruptcy and results in the creation of a new company Holocom Ltd. For the next fifteen years Holocom is not known for providing any products to the consumer market, it is also notable that the source of their research funds is unknown as well. In 2020, another well-known company, Fujitsu Inc., starts developing hologram displayers, based on the laser technology. Half a decade later, the market is flooded with cheap 3D image displayers.  In 2031, Holocom shakes the world’s market with its revolutionary advancement in holographics and introduces its first product the Enchanter. Enchanter was a little add-on device to be mounted to the existing hologram generators in order to make holograms more realistic.  After tremendous sales, in less than two years Holocom is able to buy out the developer of those hologram generators, Fujitsu Inc. The next two decades Holocom spends developing its product in secret, trying to bring virtual world into reality. Digital Immersion Module sweeps into the market in 2059.

As it always happens, people manage to get Alpha, Beta versions way before the product is released. Five years prior to the release of DIM, a group of young enthusiasts get their hands on a Beta version of DIM. They call themselves digital punks and with minor modifications to the DIM start their digital legacy.  Like cyber punks, digital punk is an underground society with a set their goal to open general public’s eyes at the beauty of the virtual creations. They set their mission to bring the most beautiful peaces created digitally inside the virtual worlds into the reality, and with DIM’s unlimited power supply they will make sure that their monuments will stand for ages to come.

I have based the future concept of my technology on couple of things. The main concepts are taken from two science fiction movies, a Visual Scrubbing technology from The Minority Report and a holographic transmitter from the Star Wars. In the Minority Report, the protagonist operates a video with a special glove, being able to resize, rotate and transform images in real time. In the Star Wars, the holographic transmitter is used as a communication device that transmits person’s voice and his/her image. The current trend in the development of laser input devises is such that soon enough we may not need any input devices at all, special systems will be in place to recognise eye movement. However, holograms are something different, seeing them we apprehend them as real, which they are not. The objects shown are frozen and lifeless and the latest developments are dedicated to making these images tangible and dynamic. (Three-Dimensional Holographic Imaging, 2002) Considering all these aspects, I have imagined that the graphic tablet itself will eventually cease to exist, but the idea of digital manipulation it will carry on through years.

References.

Moore’s Law. (April 4, 2009.). Wikipedia. Retrieved April 6, 2009, from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law

Three-Dimensional Holographic Imaging. (2002.). In C. J. Kuo, M. H. Tsai. (Eds.), Tangible, Dynamic Holographic Images, (pp 77-98).
doi: 10.1002/0471224545.ch5

TechPost#2: The Technological Development of Graphics Tablet throughout history.

The history of a graphic tablet is quite fascinating. Descending from what we come to know as a fax machine in the modern society, it has made a giant leap in the process of digitalizing a society. The first use of a graphic tablet was to recognize and digitalize handwriting. It is in the Common Era that graphic table is mainly used by designers, although, its full potentials are yet to be discovered.

Looking into the history of how the writing itself has developed, we can trace back the precedent of a graphic tablet in the religious teachings all around the world. Tablets of Stone, Tablets of Law, Tablets of Testimony, those have many names in different cultures, but the main idea is the same: something was written on them to be kept, taught and developed. The next step in development of written messages was made in the ancient Egypt. With the papyrus, the first paper, graphic tablet loses its relevancy and stays in the past and we do not hear about it until the Industrial Revolution.

The need to communicate instantly over the distances pushed forward the invention of a telephone in the 19^th century. (Industrial Revolution, 2009) In 1888, Elisha Gray patents the Telautograph, which simply was “an analog precursor to the modern fax machine”. (Wikipedia, 2009) It was used to transmit handwriting or a drawing over a two-wire circuit, and was mainly used in banks and large hospitals to transmit signatures.  This was a first step to the Online Banking, as we know it. Of course, it made lives of busy individuals as well as corporations much easier, when to complete a transaction one did not actually need to be at the bank branch; although, together with accuracy and speed, it did open a completely new field for the fraud. Later on, with the great wars at the World’s doors, the development of a graphic tablet slows down and we will not hear of it until the post-industrial era.

Beginning of the post-industrial era is symbolized by a radical change from manufacturing based economy to a service based economy. (Wikipedia, 2009) Understanding the importance of new technology’s impacts on itself, post-industrial society sets a new priority and special importance to the science as the basic source of innovation. The Information Revolution era began with the invention of the integrated circuit or computer chip, changing society on all levels. (Idea Works, 1995)  The information superhighway permitted people to communicate using computers all around the globe; fax machines, satellite dishes, and cellular phones have changed how families spend their time, the kind of work they do, and many other aspects of daily lives. Graphic tablet comes back to the scene of modern technology developments with the RAND tablet input device sold together with the DEC Workstations. (Carlson, 2005) This was a very expensive device, which would receive the magnetic signals and decode them as a set of coordinates to work with within a CAD system. (Wikipedia, 2009) In 1984, “Dr. David Thornburg [designs] a low-cost computer drawing tool for [general consumers], the Koala Pad and the bundled drawing program, KoalaPainter” (Wikipedia, 2009) for Apple II, Commodore 64 and Atari home computers.

It is clearly seen how the further development and simplification of a technology makes it available to the public. Throughout the ages, the impact that graphic tablet or its precedents had on the society varied from great, when it was a source of knowledge and information, to medium: when it affected and improved certain areas of social and personal aspects of lives. Graphic tablet has made a long way, evolving from a piece of rock with writings curved into it to a very sophisticated, state-of-art device, which is widely available to everyone.

References:

Carlson W.E. (2005, February 2.). (Ed.). An Historical Timeline of Computer Graphics and Animation. Retrieved March 15, 2009, from http://sophia.javeriana.edu.co/~ochavarr/computer_graphics_history/historia/

Graphics Tablet, Wikipedia. (2009, March 11, 04:27.). Retrieved on March 15, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_tablet

Industrial Revolution. (2009). In Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved March 15, 2009, from http://search.eb.com.proxy.lib.sfu.ca/eb/article-9042370

KoalaPad, Wikipedia (2009, February 17, 11:41.). Retrieved March 15, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KoalaPad/Painter

Sociology Timeline. (1995.). Idea Works, Inc. Retrieved March 15, from http://web.missouri.edu/~brente/timeline.htm

Stone Tablet, Wikipedia (2008, November 3, 21:36.). Retrieved March 15, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_tablet

Telautograph, Wikipedia (2009, February 11, 14:05.). Retrieved March 15, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telautograph

Collective Wiki Reflection

Creating a collective Wiki turned out to be a fun exercise. Although, the need to keep it in a professional and academic form slowed down its development a little, but overall I would say it was a success. One of the downsides though, was a limit in time to complete the research. Having used scholarly approved sources prompted a careful choice of words and sentence structures, so that not much of an editing was required. Writing a research is always somewhat biased. Having to do this research on my own, I would choose different form and writing style. Breadth and depth would most likely depend on my own experience with the subject, or without such, the knowledge I would get from academic sources compared to not so academic sources. I would structure it differently, basing the research on examples, going from the greatest, like the Internet, to the smallest ones and discussing their differences and social aspects. The example that I would particularly pay more attention to would be the use of forums and collective blogs as a successful mean of crowd sourcing, based on personal experience. Having to work in a group and again, with the time limit, forced us to stick with the point format, which was pretty much simply answering the questions, without any additional or side information on the topic. Luckily we did not have any arguments and disagreements on the topic, otherwise, being in the same room and expressing different opinions could cause some troubles. Similar to the video example we saw in the lecture about Wiki on British Bombings, when the page was completely emptied by someone who disagreed or simply did not like it, we too, had a moment when a page was deleted while being edited.

Graphic Tablet in Contemporary Society

Graphics Tablet or a Digitized Tablet, as the Wikipedia suggests, is a computer input device used to control the graphics user interface in a similar way as the computer mouse does. Most types of graphics tablets consist of a flat surface that is able to capture and transmit signals provided by the stylus (a controller, in most cases a pen) when in contact with the surface of the tablet. Early versions of tablets were mainly used for the handwriting recognition, as the reflection of Marshall McLuhan’s predictions of a Paperless Society, allowing the transfer of a written text into the word processing program for editing it. (McLuhan, M., 1964)  The modern versions offer a much higher precision, pressure, tilt recognition, and can be used for a variety of purposes that include, but not limited to the creation of computer graphics (2D and 3D).

A study of digital ink in lecture presentation conducted at the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems reviews the usage of a tablet, allowing the presenter to write down annotations on the projected slides. (Anderson, R. J.,   Hoyer, C., Wolfman S. A., Anderson R., 2004) This study discussed the analogy between the Digitized Ink and physical gestures, and its use to increase the attention to particular parts of the slides. The survey proved that 55% of audience reported their attention increased to the lecture, when only 10% reported their attention decreased. Further use of the Digital Inking systems has its social effect and proves itself useful in terms of education. Raising attention to the important parts of the lecture and at the same time making examples with ease, rather than letting out huge amounts of information, allows easier understanding of this information.

This definitely has a positive effect on the means of presentation. The ability to visually communicate with the audience, makes about any lecture more interesting, thus allowing a better perception of the information being presented. Being a university student myself, I find this to be a very interesting way to make examples on the lecture material, because there is no better way to learn as from examples.

As a plausible interchange for Digital Ink and graphics tablets in general, I can only think of the Microsoft Surface. It is a new interactive device, which allows users directly operate with digital objects on the tabletop. Although it carries a slightly different idea, it resembles a big touch screen tablet, which turns out to be the same thing. As for the implausible interchange, I have thought of the Visual Scrubbing Technology from a science fiction movie called The Minority Report. The main character, wearing special gloves, controls a 3D projected interface (a hologram) and scrolls through the video records looking for clues. Visually projected holograms still stay in the science fiction world, but the potential of operating a 3D object that does not yet exist, simply but touching it, without having to use any input devices is quite fascinating.

References.

Anderson, R. J.,   Hoyer, C., Wolfman S. A., Anderson R. (2004.). Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. A study of digital ink in lecture presentation, 567 – 574. Retieved on February 10, 2009, from http://doi.acm.org.proxy.lib.sfu.ca/10.1145/985692.985764

Graphics Tablet, Wikipedia. (2009, January 31, 20:00.). Retrieved on February 08, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_tablet

McLuhan, M. (1964) Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man.
Taylor & Francis, 1987

Plagiarism Tutorial

Plagiarism Tutorial

You Can Eat Healthy 2

via: tumblr

Inauguration

Don’t get me wrong thought, it’s awesome! =P

TED Talks: Vik Muniz: Art with wire, thread, sugar, chocolate

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/vik_muniz_makes_art_with_wire_sugar.html

Continuing a series of my wandering through the TED website…

Not much to say here, very interesting and inspiring artistic and creative work of Vik Muniz.
Check it out for yourself.

p.s. Giant earth paper clip

TED Talks: Rives: A 3-minute story of mixed emoticons

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/rives_tells_a_story_of_mixed_emoticons.html

Actually quite a sad story told by the means of emoticons . I honestly could not get the whole thing just by looking at the written story So Rives’ commentary was really needed.

Enjoy

TED Talks: David Carson: Design, discovery and humor

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/david_carson_on_design.html

David Carson talks about the design in our lives and brings up quite a few interesting and humorous issues, and since we were dealing with the design in the last lab I thought this might be very interesting…
As I’ve watched this, and I’ve watched this 4 times(yes an hour<_<) I kept stumbling across a few quotes that I could not help but write down…

Carson talks a little bit about his book where he discusses some of Marshal McLuhan’s quotes that were never published. Sometimes that really makes me think, how did he(McLuhan) know all of this? How could he predict that so many things will happen ahead of time…

“I hate this stuff its hard to read…”

Another quote to celebrate progressive engineering thinking:

“…Fixed the bomb shelter with the duck tape… and I think I’m ready.”

See if you find this one: “If the cigarette companies can lie, so can we.” That is the second line on a poster in NY, the first one I wont write as its much more fun to see it on the poster in the video.

His as for Microsoft was changed in Germany, which he found quite amusing: “If you’re gonna put a kid in the ad, pick one that looks alive.”

He also talks about the People Magazine and their 911 issue. Thinking of bad design… quite a few things to think about.

Carson also shows off his desktop and the way he’s organized his records… “Somebody told me today there’s this thing called folders. But I dont know…”

He also makes a really nice comparison of font faces to the test piloting… haha, hmmm…. Serif….

As I said,I’ve watched this video 4 times and going to fave it for the future references… actually going to see if I can download it It really worth cheching out.