WEEK THREE: DESIGN IDEAS

Class this week was a little difficult for me, as we had to begin thinking about our assignment and the whole idea of the virtual tutorial was still a little confusing. Our group kept running back and forth with ideas, but nothing seemed to stick.

Firstly, the idea of a virtual environment was one which had us all a little perplexed.  Coming form a design background, we were all used to the tangible and "real", so the idea of a virtual environment was confronting to say the least. The advantage of the virtual environment, however, is that there are few limitations to possibilities.  

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Our group did, however, come up with a number of guidelines for our possible architectural fiction.  These included that any situation had to be somewhat realistic- that is, there had to be some field of study that was already currently leading toward this innovation, as we believed we should not look more than 50 years into the future for our virtual solution.  Secondly, we would try to stay away from the gimmicky and "tacky" ideas of virtual reality and "second life" or "sims" type applications.  Finally, we decided that whatever virtual solution we decided upon should be to the benefit of society, and to stay away from any apocalyptic potential secnarios or applications.  That said, a brainstorming session ensued.

An early idea was of a governing system which oversaw human life.  The background idea relates to an increasing reliance on systems in our day-to-day lives.  This idea, however, was quickly voted down due to its overwhelming use in movies, and the fact that the majority of opinions within these movies lead to the system eventually attempting to eradicate humanity.

A second idea was floated by way of a plug-and-play healthcare system, which would allow users to connect and upload data, which would then be analysed for uses varying from dietary requirements to diagnosis of illnesses. This idea needs further investigation in terms of whether or not technology could actually exist within the 50 year time-frame that would enable it to come to fruition.

The idea of a virtual system where language was no longer an issue for communication was explored, however the use of computer programs such as google translate mean that a sophisticated translation software is likely to occur in the very near term.  Interestingly, the adoption of a universal second language was also considered- although not a virtual solution.  Such a language, it seems, actually exists in the form of Esperanto, which has been derived from many different languages in order to make it easy to learn and understand. More information can be found here. 

An idea which was particularly interesting was that of the "internet friend" phenomenon- that people could have "friends" on the other side of the world that they had never met in person.  We tried to understand how these friendships exist, and what limitations they may have, and it was postulated that perhaps it would be difficult for these people to have the shared experiences that would exist in "real life".  As class was ending, we decided to explore this individually and come prepared for next weeks class.

One quite humorous outcome of this weeks class was the discovery of a kissing machine in Japan, which allowed those in a long distance relationship to "kiss" each other. Personally, I find it disturbed, but the video is below.