Wanting another generation

The popularity of Instagram, the photo sharing application that adds 'vintage' filters to each photo, is to me another indication of that today's connected generation also has a nostalgic want for a simpler life.

I won't theorise too deeply about this, but I do think that with world markets trembling, youth unemployment consistently increasing and the unfulfilled promises of university degrees there is a wanting for our memories of these times to be more rosy than they actually are.

Using applications like Instagram to remember today's ambivalence with sunbursts, overexposures and hazy blurs, this unfulfilled generation is in effect adding the layer of promise of the post-war 40/50s where these giant leaps in instant photographs were first seen.

The irony that it has taken technology developed in this generation to take today's memories back into a more promising generation has not been lost.

The saddest Ad I've seen

This latest TVC for the iPad really hit me quite hard. Most examples shown are what I would consider a natural extension of technological communication and media interaction, but there was one snippet that made me really sad.

The kid learning to write on an iPad in what looks like a crayon style just hit home how removed our future generations will be from reality. If future generations will learn to write using an iPad then what understanding will they have of the crayon 'font' if they have never actually seen or used a crayon.

The gradual extinction of pen and paper and the rapid move to a digital world lived behind a glass tablet is one of the saddest things I've seen recently.

Development continues in multi-touch

I was pointed towards an article about a mob called Visual Planet that has developed a thin film that is able to turn any screen into a multi-touch screen.

It's definitely an interesting concept (if it is affordable) that could possibly take large format multi-touch a little more mainstream than it currently is. Although I imagine the software and creative development is still fairly costly.



Amnesia have been keeping tabs on the development of multi-touch on their blog which is well worth a read. It goes to show that with the level of development in this space there must be some bright sparks that see that it has a mainstream future.

But my favourite multi-touch application is still Johnny Chung Lee's multi-touch Wii-remote hack. It goes to show with a little ingenuity and a lot of creativity anything is possible.