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."

Comments

for the love of......

[Anonymous Coward]

great...now the only thing bigger than my ego is the ego of the entire world! I CAN'T WORK LIKE THIS!

I'll be in my trailer!

Re:for the love of......

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

If there's anything more important than my ego around here, I want it caught and shot now.

Adult Movies?

[mOoZik]

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!

Re:Adult Movies?

[nizo]

Ayiieeee, what are you doing to the goatse man??????

Re:Adult Movies?

[tonsofpcs]

Yea, but you can do that with some nice compositing software anyway. :)

But of course...

[fishlet]

We all know the first pioneer of this new tech is going to be the porn industry...

Re:But of course...

[Timesprout]

Woo hoo, I am gonna look sooooo lush with Jenna Jamesons body!

Note to self, shave before taking face pic.

Great

[mhaisley]

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.

Re:Great

[gl4ss]

*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.*

semi-virtual actors. the actor doesn't need to be a real person, yet he can be in 20 movies per year easily by using cheap acting students. or imagine terminator 5000: arnolds face returns.

You TOO can be a Doom 3 Space Marine !

[88NoSoup4U88]

I don't see too much special here (besides it being a funny gimmick), as it's an animated movie.
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.

Even more uses...

[nacturation]

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!

3-D face scanner at Tech Museum in San Jose

[G4from128k]

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.....

Re:The Sheep Look Up AKA A Pile of Stinky Dren

[rco3]

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.

The real pionneer was Ned Flanders!

[PeteQC]

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?

Re:strange..

[voice of unreason]

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.

Re:The Sheep Look Up AKA A Pile of Stinky Dren

[nomadic]

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).

Brunner is God

[farrellj]

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.

Not come to pass Yet???

[TechnoGrl]

From the Amazon page of the book :

"An enduring classic, this book offers a dramatic and prophetic look at the potential consequences of the escalating destruction of Earth. In this nightmare society, air pollution is so bad that gas masks are commonplace. Infant mortality is up, and everyone seems to suffer from some form of ailment. The water is polluted, and only the poor drink from the tap. The government is ineffectual, and corporate interests scramble to make a profit from water purifiers, gas masks, and organic foods."

Seems pretty much like now to me ?? !

This was tried years ago in videogames:

[bjbest]

At least 20 years ago I read in a gaming magazine about an arcade video game developer who recalled inventing a game that had a very advanced feature: the arcade game had a camera to make a digital snapshot of your face when you inserted the coins. Your face would be incorporated into your onscreen playing character in the game. Also if you were a highscorer, then your picture would appear onscreen between plays with the other highscorers. A prototype of the game were placed in an arcade to guage gamer interest.

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.

Happy Birthday song origins

[Old Man Kensey]

Audacious wrote:

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.)