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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.
be my little sister and my favorite food be chicken nuggets?
Monstar L
would this need? is this going to be like some 4 frame per second redraw?
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Even Nerds get married!
Didnt they do this to a lesser extent with Tony Hawk 4 or somethin on the PS2?
You are all a bunch of idots.
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.
and the the On Point interview
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.
So will actors/actresses now have copyrights for their faces?
The friendliest digital photography forums on the net!
what an imagination I've got!
What I say three times is true.
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've tried reading two or three different Brunner novels, and I couldn't ever come close to finishing one. I'm not sure I even got through a single chapter. This, from someone who almost CANNOT put down a novel no matter how crappy it is - I've read some of my father's dreaded 'Mack Bolan' drivel (no, he's not the author - he just reads 'em, can't imagine why), and finished the damned things without giving up. Hell, I read Clive Cussler cover to cover. Ludlum! I made it through two or three of Robert L. Forward's heavy-on-the-S-weak-on-the-F novels - folks, I read Harry
Harrison's godawful DeathWorld trilogy (tripe-ogy?) in its entirety. But I can't do that with Brunner.
It's been years and years and years since I tried, and maybe I could do it now. I'm just not interested in trying again.
Ce n'est pas un vrai mouvement de robot!
You might find that years of video games, rapid cut scene-shift TV and music videos have trained you up for that style. (Definitely 20 minutes into the future. ;) Those three books (Stand, Sheep, Shock) are not an easy read the first few times.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
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!
Definitely, in fact it's briefly mentioned in the article. In case anyone hasn't read the book (no, seeing the movie doesn't count), in the society described in 451, the population is kept docile partly through television programs that are designed to distract from real life problems. The main character's wife watches a soap opera where the characters interact in an artificial manner with her, making her feel that she is a part of the show's television "family". This seems like a similar type of thing: give people the illusion that they're involved, without giving them any real choices to make or issues to think about.
I have no problem stopping a novel I don't enjoy, but I have to rank Stand On Zanzibar as one of the best sf novels ever; I think it truly deserves its reputation. I think in a lot of ways it created what would eventually become cyberpunk (not the technology aspect, but the near-future catastrophism aspect).
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?
Help! First they made me into a singing purple dinasour, and now I'm Goatse!
Table-ized A.I.
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.
A weak effort, given that the chapters are only a page or two long.
Maybe you should have given it more of a shot. The Sheep Look Up is, of the three Brunner novels mentioned, by far the best, and that's saying a lot--Stand On Zanzibar is pretty damned impressive as well. Sheep has a few clunkers in the prediction department (e.g. evil microwave ovens), but overall it's terrifyingly prescient. It covers pesticides becoming ineffectual, overuse of antibiotics in livestock feed, and a huge variety of general ecological failures. Brunner predicts the rise of organic grocery stores, the breeding of cannabis into strains with very high THC content, an African economic union (c.f. the African Union), oxygen bars, and a seemingly endless list of things we now see every day.
It's nice to see this book back in print. Far too few have read it.
Would Mr. Uh, Clem please report to the hospitality tower in your area.
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.
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