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Your Face On the Big Screen
blamanj writes "In another case of SciFi becoming reality, you can now star in an animated film as your FutureCast (tm) face-scan is edited into the picture in real-time. John Brunner, in his Hugo-winning novel, Stand on Zanzibar predicted a similar development in television, lampooning people sitting at home while watching travologues of themselves 'on vacation.'
Brunner, in addition to being an excellent writer, had some spot-on predictions of a virus-laden Internet in Shockwave Rider. Fortunately, the predictions of his eco-dystopia The Sheep Look Up have not come to pass. Yet."
I'll be in my trailer!
Ka ching! I'm sure every nerd...erm, guy, would like to play out his fantasies, at least with his head on some other guy's body. Forgive me if I completely misunderstood the blurb, but someone has to adopt this technology. For me!
A blog like any other.
We all know the first pioneer of this new tech is going to be the porn industry...
Blender And Linux Fan
This is really great, I can see my self standing in line for hours at an amusment park, and afterwords being able to buy advertising featuring me.
Besides the really vain, what use is there for this type of technology, it's kind of a "wow thats cool, now what" type thing.
or a plug for the EyeToy addon for the PS2?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
be my little sister and my favorite food be chicken nuggets?
Monstar L
I can't believe it. The Sheep Look Up (and I use title caps with some trepidation) is the only book I have ever thrown across my room in disgust! I was brought up in a house hold that cherished and respected all forms of the written word, but this book was just too much for me. I only got two chapters in. That was enough.
would this need? is this going to be like some 4 frame per second redraw?
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Even Nerds get married!
would be Thomas De Zengotita's new book called 'Mediated' - very cool stuff, check out his NPR interview for an intro.
Didnt they do this to a lesser extent with Tony Hawk 4 or somethin on the PS2?
You are all a bunch of idots.
.. but why?
I haven't read it (nor heard of it until this morning) but if you could expand upon the judgement of "this book sucks" with a bit more detail, I'd be more inclined not to proverbially throw your opinion of it across the room.
Replacing textures of 3d fps game-models have been common ground for ages : Only now with the D3 engine, you can get near the quality seen in the screenshots of the animation.
Still, a funny idea.
Not only can you have your face rendered onto characters, but companies can hook into some global advertising database (eg: combination of Safeway club card, Airmiles, and other reward programs) and poll your shopping preferences. The characters can then sport jackets and shirts with your favorite clothing brand, drink from cans of your favorite soda, and drive your preferred brand of car. Oh, the possibilities are limitless!
Add in text-to-speech technology and maybe in the future they'll ask you to recite a few paragraphs so that the computer can learn your speech patterns, then the character will talk using your voice. Combine this with speech-to-text, and someone can have a video conference with someone else using your face and voice. They speak, it's converted to text, and then output as speech in your voice on the other end. Hello identity theft!
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Estimated time to someone submitting a penis picture as their "face": 10 seconds and counting.
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Beer at full chug
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Haw haw! I can't believe they took it!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
So will actors/actresses now have copyrights for their faces?
The friendliest digital photography forums on the net!
Does this remind anyone else of Farenheit 451?
what an imagination I've got!
What I say three times is true.
I just read Stephenson's Diamond Age and it had the concept of fully interactive media. Instead of just overlaying a face over a static movie, 'ractives didn't seperate actors and viewers. The idea was that the 'viewer' would buy a ractive and would pay a different amount depending on the type of ractive. They would also be able to have other viewers join them or they could pay professional actors to fill in the spot. The system was flexible enough to adapt to whatever the people did (and probably had a rating system to get rid of trolls) so it combined the basics of a script with something like a MMORPG. As AI come closer to the Turing test, this might also take off as you buy 3d/VRML/etc client and join RPGs that concentrate more on the role-playing rather than casting fireballs. However, I don't think this kind of thing will really take off until it becomes open enough that anyone can write their own ractives instead of just joining a centralized server an follow someone else's script.
--
Want a free iPod?
Or try a free Nintendo DS, GC, PS2, Xbox. (you only need 4 referrals)
Wired article as proof
article has your name in the headline.
Several years ago the Tech Museum in San Jose had a revolving 3-D scanner that would scan people's heads. After you got scanned, it created a 3-D model of your head with a full-color texture map (which looks really strange when flattened on a monitor because you discover that your face is only a very small part of your head). You then were given an URL that would work in other exhibits and let you download your face.
I wonder if its still there.... I wonder if I still have that file.....
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
I seriously though the same thing when I read the blurb: "What is this article about, pushing a new technology to put you in a movie, or a plug for the author?"
/. needs more editorial review, but whomever submitted this article, please make it seem less like a TV commercial for the author next time.
I'm not going to waste my time bashing on how
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
God, I had no idea anyone else had read that book. I was actually plugging it (again) right before I read this. Stand on Zanzibar is completely eerie and wonderful.
This could actually be pretty cool for online games. You could be on a team with friends from out of town, and know who you were playing with. On the other hand, it could lead to some creepy deja vu if you see someone at the mall!
What does this button do...
Get Those Tron Bodies, Make a Tron MMO and SCAN your face in :D Now That Would BE KEWL!!!
:D
:D
Kinda totally unrelated but finished Tron 2.0 and
I WANT MORE TRON
Disney stop procrasintating!!!!! Just don't mess it up eh
Selling personalized videos more than 2 years ago!
(Lisa's face is pasted on a cowgirl's body.)
Cowgirl: Howdy, pardners! My name is sheriff...
Homer voiceover: Lisa Simpson!
Cowgirl: I sure am hungry for my favorite food...
Homer voiceover: McNuggets!
Lisa: I don't like McNuggets! I'm a vegetarian!
Homer: Still? Well then you're not gonna like your other present!
(A wrapped turkey)
(In the film a cowboy rides up)
Cowgirl: Why it's my best friend...
Homer voiceover: Maggie!
Lisa: Huh?
Bartender: Bad news sheriff...
Homer voiceover: Lisa Simpson!
Bartender: Some Indians took all the...
Homer voiceover: McNuggets! Mmmm McNuggets... haughughalughalugh!
Cowgirl: I'll get those no good Indians, just as sure as my favorite book is...
Homer voiceover: Magazines! Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...
Bart voiceover: Wake up, Dad!
Homer voiceover: Wha wha wha wha wha?
Montreal - Best city to live in!
Hmm, sound familiar:
Courtesy TV Tome
Fnord.
He's wrong. It's brilliant. Maybe he just has the attention span of a gnat.
I first read it about 25 years ago, and had _no_ _trouble_ _at_ _all_ finishing it in record time. I've since re-read it a couple of times.
What a long, strange trip it's been.
If I could have convinced my computer programming friend who had no posters on his walls in college residence, to have a slightly larger than lifesized cardboard cutout of himself made, and put it on his wall.
It would be creepy, funny, and decorating, all at the same time.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
where a plot point is that they pasted Arnie's head on another actor's body to fake his death. We all laughed, that we would ever have the technology capable of doing that at the time, but now??
So could this be the end of big name actors, when you and your family star in every movie? Well, apart from the ones that have a love interest where I wanna stick some awesome chick's head on. Hmmm... On second thoughts, this is really going to break up families, when your fantasies, be they sexual or not, are lived out with other people.
He did an excellent job of predicting huge bits of today's world...but don't forget, he based it all upon the work of Heidi and Alvin Toffler...The Shockwave Rider is named after the Toffler's "Future Shock"...and if Brunner is God, then they are the Mother and Father dieties of God.
ttyl
Farrell
Sorry if that offends you monotheists, I'm a Druid.
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
Seems pretty much like now to me ?? !
----- In Your Cubicle No One Can Hear You Scream...
Most people don't have a terribly realistic view of how they look. This is highlighted by their reactions to amateur home videos. "oh! I look terrible in that". Making people look attractive and not awkward in the video medium is extremely difficult.
So, I'd imagine this technology isn't going to be nearly as important as the technology to make various automatic subtle changes to a person so that their facial features and expressions look attractive, graceful, etc but are still recognisable both to themselves and, less importantly, to other people.
Nihil Illegitemi Carborvndvm
"Seems pretty much like now to me"
I was just down to the store yesterday for new cartridges for the gasmask...
No, I wasn't. Infant mortality is down about everywhere, the water is getting cleaner in industrialized countries and the Corps hate organic food. People are living longer and longer with high quality of living through thier lives. So how is it like now?
Seems pretty much like now to me ?? !
Because, as we all know, everybody wears surgical masks to protect their fragile lungs from the emissions of automobiles that get cleaner every years, and there are frequent epidemics of rubella and pertussis among infants. And as we all know, organic foods are a gigantic and profitable industry.
But hey, two out of five ain't bad. Although there is some debate as to the validity of one of those remaining two.... One and a half out of five ain't bad.
...but is it art?
How often does something like the Great London Smog happen?
Never mind drinking from the tap, the truly poor don't even have running water. Poor people in developed nations often get drinkable water from the tap.
Infant mortality is a lot lower than it used to be, thanks to advances in medical science.
I think we have it much better now (in some ways) than we used to in the "good old days."
Help! First they made me into a singing purple dinasour, and now I'm Goatse!
Table-ized A.I.
Next Time, Everyone Wins!
Smells like stinky, irrelevant product placement.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
A similar idea is presented by Niel Stephenson in The Diamond Age, or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer. Stephenson uses the term ractive to:
Quoted from http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/RactiveIn "Farenheit 451" Ray Bradbury talked about people staring in TV shows way beyond when John Brunner ever wrote about it. According to Amazon.com's scans of the copyright dates:
:-)
Ray Bradbury's Farenheit 451
and
John Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar
Sorry, Bradbury did it first.
In fact, given the dates, I'd say John read 451 when in school and the idea probably percolated for a while and then popped out later on. This happens all the time to people (song writers, story writers, etc...). It is also IMHO why Congress original set the 14 year coverage of copyrights with a single 14 year extension (if asked for). So that ideas could be discovered, used, and then rolled back into the seething mass of consciousness only to be spit back out later on in another, maybe slightly different, form. Copyrights which remove this plowing of ideas back into the general masses basically destroys everyone's ability to make new ideas or items. Because the one person who owns the original copyright can, presently, charge whatever they want for their copyright thus limiting the availability of ideas.
Do you think that non-original ideas (like the making of ice cream) can not be copyrighted and halt everyone's ability to do something? Think about the case of the "Happy Birthday" song played by Mozart centuries ago. You don't hear it in restaurants much anymore (oh, they have "Happy Birthday" songs but they are not THE "Happy Birthday" song). The reason? Some guy copyrighted it and the Copyright Office was stupid enough to give him the copyright. Even though the Copyright Office's own rules state that anything that pre-existed before the copyright laws went into effect could not be copyrighted!
So go figure.
Someone put a black hole in my pocket and now I'm broke.
All was fine until the top scoring player of the game exposed his genetalia to the camera. The arcade operator complained to the manufacturer that the machine, when not being played, flashed a big picture of a P3N15 along with the top ten scorers.
It just shows you that there always would be some smart ass who will try to screw up the system by throwing in something completely unexpected.
No longer will people say "i don't believe you" when I said I picked up a really hot chick on holidays far, far away. I will now have photo's to back up my story!
Would Mr. Uh, Clem please report to the hospitality tower in your area.
Based on the movie preview, you barely get to see their faces. If you blink at the wrong time, you're out of luck, but minus one big ego.
Gibson borrowed/stole the same thing from Brunner in one of his novels (Virtual Light? I don't remember.) The protagonist's employer, Slitscan, tried to blackmail him using this technique, IIRC.
I'm trying to think if Sterling lifted anything from Brunner. It's been a while since I read Islands in the Net, but I vaguely remember that as being somewhat reminiscent of Stand on Zanzibar. And the mood of Heavy Weather was kind of like Sheep Look Up.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Maybe soon enough. Water is actually a big issue in many places for the immediate future. We might have clean drinking water now in the US, but the current trend is to remove the "E" and the "P" from the EPA.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
The melody to 'Happy Birthday' is not copyrighted. Only the lyrics are.
As a testament to the idiocy of American copyright law, the lyrics will remain copyrighted until 2030.
Also, Mozart never played such a song--it would have been rather hard for him to play a song written 98 years after he died...
What bozo at Slashdot let Microsoft run a Flash ad on this page that plays an air horn sound?
Think about the case of the "Happy Birthday" song played by Mozart centuries ago. You don't hear it in restaurants much anymore (oh, they have "Happy Birthday" songs but they are not THE "Happy Birthday" song). The reason? Some guy copyrighted it and the Copyright Office was stupid enough to give him the copyright. Even though the Copyright Office's own rules state that anything that pre-existed before the copyright laws went into effect could not be copyrighted!
Cecil Adams begs to disagree with you. (Well. Cecil doesn't beg. Rather the opposite, usually.)
-- Old Man Kensey
The Brunner novels that I've read have been very good. "The Infinitive of Go" is a novellette about teleportation; you could read it in one sitting. "Polymath" is pretty good; it's about a polymath. "The Crucible of Time" is excellent; it has some very interesting astrophysics and biophysics.
Actually, I would give the orginal credit for the idea of realtime scripting of yourself into the program you are watching to Ray Bradbury in Fahrenheit 451. There, you can purchase a unit for your TV-walls that inserts your name into the dialog in realtime. True, Ray Bradbury's system only dynamically added in your name, but how big of a jump is it to add in your image once you factor in that at the time he wrote, realtime image manipulation was not possible?
Technically, it can be argued that the first to let you put your face on a virtual character's head, and order him/her around, was The Sims. The Deluxe version even shipped standard with a tool allowing you to align and convert one of your photos into a face texture.
And with the right expansion pack, yeah, you could watch your virtual self go on a vacation, like in the summary.
Now ok, it's a far cry from starring in an animated feature, but still, you could build a photo-album or story with it.
Personally I never saw a point in this, though. I'm me, and my sims are my sims. They're _not_ me. (Plus, it would be spooky to do that and then see that sim set the house on fire, or drown in the swimming pool.)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
And yes, I'm going there next week. :P
Cheers,
-j.
Well, now I've got this actor on screen who looks like me, and has the voice of Mickey Mouse?
"The more prohibitions there are, The poorer the people will be" -- Lao Tse
He was really dedicated to science fiction - he died of a stroke at a convention! My favorite book of his is "A Maze of Stars" in which a sentient starship makes the rounds of all of the known Earth-seeded colonies in the galaxy.
This might work in Asia, where they all look alike, but it won't work for my culture.
This might work with whities, where they all look alike, but it won't work for my culture.
This might work in Europe, where they all look alike, but it won't work for my culture.
This might work with Blacks, where they all look alike, but it won't work for my culture.
This might work with Hispanics, where they all look alike, but it won't work for my culture.
This might work with Native Americans, where they all look alike, but it won't work for my culture.
have read *Stand on Zanzibar*. The last line of *Stand on Zanzibar* is "Christ, what an imagination I've got!" and it's Slashdot-relevant, as is the pivotal line in the book, a quotation from Lewis Carroll, "What I say three times is true." If you've read the book you'll realize that my posting above, applied to this story, in a way conveys the tone of the book.
You obviously haven't read both. I have. Bradbury imagines a room with four-wall television showing realistic soap operas or maybe reality shows which (combined with medication) serves to monopolize the lives of some people (e.g., Montag's wife). Brunner imagines a television system where many shows and nearly all commercials have a couple, Mr. and Mrs. Everywhere, whose appearance can be customized either with generic images (same body type, complexion, hair and eye color, etc.) or with your own image (suitably idealized). These are very different concepts, and Bradbuy's, while certainly relevant to today's world, is not relevant to this story.
Interesting comment. I do believe it to be a natural tendency that each culture seems to see other races or cultures as "looking alike". So for me, watching an Asian's face substituted in a film would probably work well (not being Asian, the other body movements and occasional mistakes would probably not be as noticeable to me, as, say, if my wife's face were put on to someone else's body).
More interestingly, though, is that such an observation is marked as flaimbait. I guess mentioning natural tendencies like that is Politically Incorrect.
Since we're on the topic of global environmental gloom'n'doom...
Years ago I got to see MIT Futurist Lester Thoreau speak. He opened his talk with a quote from the "Global 2000" (or some name like that) report done during the Carter administration. "If present trends continue..." and then went on to forecast gloom'n'doom. Thoreau asserted that you could quit reading the paper right after those first words, because present trends never continue, over the long run. Things change.
If present trends continue...
The US will continue to grow more and more conservative. One aspect will be selection of domestic news coverage by media moguls and "cultural forces."
The US will continue to act like an overbearing superpower until in about 20 years we are economically overwhelmed by China, kind of like what we did to the USSR in the 1980's. Enough people will be happy to see the US get its comeuppance that they won't notice for a while that the new superpower is no better.
Environmental degredation will continue, and we'll all get used to the Humanitarian Disaster of the Year as marginal areas become uninhabitable. But no concrete action will be taken. Later in the century Kyoto will be meaningless as the world's dominant economy (China) continues to be exempt as a "developing nation."
One could go on...
That present trends probably won't continue is the bright spot in all of this.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
So, if they scan my face, and I license it for use in commercials (selling cars, personal hygene products, lite beer, etc.), do I get paid for each appearance by my intellectual property? Or is it just a one-time fee, and they're allowed to make "archival copies" and use them however they want in the future?
Chip H.
... does it have to only be my face they replace?
I mean, maybe with the "scale" and "expand to fit page" options maybe I'd have a better self image.
-Styopa
Just because all of these things haven't completely come to pass yet does not mean that we aren't on that road. Bottled water is a huge industry. Pollution is becoming terrible in some areas. Cleaner emission automobiles don't counterbalance the increasing number of automobiles making pollutants as our population continues to grow. Besides that, cars are only one source of pollution. Organic foods may be a small market place for foods, but it is growing. You have to give these things time. We are headed for that world if changes are not made. Of course I love my 4x4 truck, steak, and potatoes. It can't get that bad before I die anyway!
I can see it now - people will be playing The Sims, with their faces on top of better than average bodies -- ever notice in Sims: The Urbz noone is overweight even though most Americans are obese? -- as they avoid walking and talking to their neighbors IRT.
...
Sigh. The Decline and Fall of the American Empire - done in by porting the faces of overweight girls onto Natalie Portman's body and overweight boys onto Ryan Seacrest's body.
Now noone will go outside
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Water is an issue. But it's not because of pollution, it's because more and more people are living because of increased food production and distrobution where there isn't enough water to support them.
Market forces will force advances in desal and moving water to where the demand is.
Without the EPA, the public will demand clean and abundant water and the industry will bend to that will.
I hope you're right about desalinization. In general, I'm a believer in the market place as being an engine for creativity, but the market follows it's own rules, and won't hurry up if there are millions suffering if those millions can't pay.
Also, market forces have a way of diverting water to those best equipped to pay for it. I live in Los Angeles, a city which owes a great deal of it's growth to tricking the people of the Owens Valley out of their water. (The movie Chinatown is loosely based on facts.)
I don't think you can completely tease apart the population problem and the pollution problem. The two are extremely intertwingled.
Without the EPA, the public will demand clean and abundant water and the industry will bend to that will.
I think you're overestimating the economic power (to say nothing of the cohesiveness) of "the people" vs. the economic power of corporate polluters. If a majority is unaffected, it is doubtful that they will come to aid the minority until it's already to late. This is why some regulation is good, and why Bush's plans aren't. Under Bush's plan, polluters would be able to pollute one place so long as their average pollution was within acceptable limits. So, a polluter could wipe out your town, so long as that, on the average, their pollution met some average.
Certainly, there are some facets of society that are headed toward disaster (and if you want we can argue until we're blue in the face about which ones they are). My point was that it's not here now.
...but is it art?
I always knew Matrox was just ahead of their time with this. And you all laughed at my G550! Ha! Who's laughing now, suckers?
Actually, according to this article both the lyrics as well as the melody are copyrighted and have been since 1938. Since the lawsuit filed by the Hill's sister used the melody (ie: music notes) to show that the re-copyrighted song was the same as the Hill's sister's songs. This would (I would have to assume) mean that the person who recently copyrighted the "Happy Birthday To You" song is going to be sued. :-)
Someone put a black hole in my pocket and now I'm broke.