10/20/2003: Tholos project

My greatest fascination in life is the clash of society and technology, and how technology is changing how we live with each other and how it brings us together.

Here's a concept that really represents all that in a big way. It's called the Tholos, named after an ancient Roman structure.

It's just in the concept phase now, but it could happen. It's a round building, 10 feet high and 23 feet wide. On the building is a high-res display and there are directional microphones and speakers all around. Each Tholos is networked to a remote identical Tholos in a different location, and everything that happens at the remote Tholos is displayed in real time at the local one.

So the London Tholos would be connected to the Vienna Tholos, and you in London could actually walk up to people in Vienna and speak with them directly and semi-privately.



It's to be advertising-supported, and the people behind it are looking to expand the idea to many other locations as well.

It's meant to be an attraction, not a tool to accomplish things; on the other hand, who knows what this sort of thing could generate?

I want one! Unfortunately they're about L1.4M ($2.5 M).

full story

project website

Will it translate?

Most Austrians speak German. That's gonna make meaningful communication tough.


OTOH, most of the people who walk up to this thing and try to use it will probably be American tourists, so maybe it's OK :-)

How long do you think it would be before the first long-distance public mooning took place?

That'd be a sweet piece of international Tunick art.

Well that's the thing; of course the designers envision all kind of highbrow uses like sharing art and culture. How long before the most common phrase going across the wires is "show us yer tits!"

Tell me that isn't what the guy in the second picture is saying. And that's from the official website.

You can bet that if they put one in Baghdad, there will terroristic threats shouted to wherever the other end is.

All in all, even with the obvious opportunity for international immaturity and crudeness, how can this be anything other than good? Face to face across space is a cool thing, and sure to inspire some interesting forms of communication between people otherwise removed from one another.

I think it is great. Who do I talk to about getting one in KC?

Since it is supported by advertising, I would like to offer the first promotional idea:



"This "pressed ham" brought to you by Hormel."

Won't somebody PLEASE think of the children?

This thing seems really cool, but for some reason I get the "Big Brother is watching you" feeling from it. Probably just my paranoia or quilty conscious kicking in.:p

There are already too blamed many people I have to look at every day - why would I want to look at a bunch more just because they are a long way away?

I don't get it. Do you make quilts?

Oh.. silly me.

quilted consciousness
Wake up to the patterns that surround us, that link us through the stitched and pieced awareness of time and place.

Tholos is promising. I've been wondering what the next generation cyber sex would be.

I must admit Dave, your behavior has been exemplary for quite some time.

zippy, you misspell everything horribly. The reason it doesn't bother me is because you don't pretend to be a dictionary.

      I dunno... seems to me that this is the closest we can come to putting people in a zoo. Behind glass, in their natural enviroment...

      As far as Dave goes, he's not the biggest asshole this site has seen but he's one of the best. We like Dave. Plus, he's actually has been cooling down a bit of late. Two posts with no obcenities or anything. The "banal" comment was friggin' funny too.

[quote]Originally posted by Whit
As far as Dave goes, he's not the biggest asshole this site has seen but he's one of the best.
I agree.

We like Dave.
I like Dave too when he isn't giving me crap.

Plus, he's actually has been cooling down a bit of late. Two posts with no obcenities or anything.
I also have noted Dave's recent posts as being civil, it's just curious to me that he choses to break his record just to give me a blast of shit.

[quote]Originally posted by LUVBUGZ
[b]

Fuck you, Quzah. I already admitted that I did that in the past, but I don't do it anymore. If Dave was simply correcting my spelling I would welcome that, but he isn't. He's using that as a way to put me down and to raise himself up in his feeble attempts to show what a superior human being he is. Well, I can't decide who deserves the crown for Biggest Asshole, you or Dave.

RAAWWWWWWWWWR! She's a tiger! And by a tiger, I mean ugly and useless.

You surely are entitled to your disillusioned, half-assed opinion Dave, but I gotta say.....Fuck you too!!!

Quote:

Originally posted by dave zippy, you misspell everything horribly. The reason it doesn't bother me is because you don't pretend to be a dictionary.

I suppose we could give her shit for that malformed ellipsis.

I was looking for a reason to dislike her anyway after reading that "help" thread in Tech. Looks like now we all have an excuse.

      All right guys, if you want to go off on Bugz anymore take it to the appropriate thread in the Cellar-related section. It's been proclaimed this kind thing is improper for this forum, as a lot of people only read this section.

      As for the Tholos project, isn't it interesting that we all assume it will be used crudely? Everything from mooning to tit flashing (or at least requests for such) has been suggested. Notice nobody argued the point either. Isn't it interesting how jr. high people become if you remove the possibility of a meaningful negative backlash?

Quote:

Originally posted by LUVBUGZ You surely are entitled to your disillusioned, half-assed opinion Dave, but I gotta say.....Fuck you too!!!

Please excuse any mispelling , english is not my primary language.

      Hey, where did the women go? I mean we've got guys admiting left and right that we're pretty loathsome and can't wait to misuse this technology. With all the chics on this site not one finds any of this worth responding too? WTF?

Oooh. Aaah.

It's a big, round, cool thing.

You know how it is ... Guys respond to imagery, chicks to direct experience.

They are all quietly, coolly figuring out how to use this to their advantage.:p

Project will get buy in on the Austrian side if this thing plays re-runs of Knight-Rider and Baywatch because Austrians love David Hasslehoff .. (That sounds not enirely right, eh?)

Because, it effectively removes the number one reason for cultural differences: distance. Given enough of these things, the cultural changes throughout the world would be HUGE.

Not cool, indeed. Are you insane?

Who wants to homogenize the world with all this cultural change anyway? And no I don't think it is cool (or at least not a big improvement over existing communication technology) and no I don't think it is a substitute for being and living in a culture different than your own. A teleporter, now that would be cool but a fancy window - nope.

That raises the practical issue again (and I'm a practical kind of guy). Yeah, this oversized mirror is great, but I think if they want to people to eventually adopt it for personal use, it's not being presented that way. Too much of something to gawk at. The practical uses will be overshadowed by perverted fucks jerking off for an equally sick crowd of onlookers in Botswania.

If you do it the other way around - try to do something practical that ends up being something attractive - there's more curiosity and perceived value from a total blunder. Look in last week's Newsweek - there's a short clip about a Japanese scientist who created flourescent fish by injecting dye so he could see the organs better. They're selling like sponge bob in the US.

I don't think it is like the web at all. One of the good things about the web that isn't true about this thing is that people with interests in common tend to find each other. Another thing that is neat about the web is that it is a non-visual media. You don't instantly make judgements about a person by how they look. One more thing about the web that is different is that it isn't real time for the most part. That is a strength. It waits for you to come see it but doesn't impose it's own time on you like this thing would. That is why I like email instead of telephones. It waits till I'm ready to read it. It doesn't ring in the middle of my dinner.

In fact, I think the web is the actual opposite of this thing. Looking cool is not enough to make a sea change in the way we exist in the world. This thing may look cool but it is a glorified video conference device.

btw As a scientist I used the web back before it was the web exactly for what it was first intended for - data sharing and communication in not real time. Also, you may be underestimating the importance that browsers played in the development of the web-as-we-know it. Prior to browsers you actually only got to what you were looking for.

I think it's a neat idea and I'll be interested to see what we, as global societies, do with it. Personally, I am, for the most part, an isolationist, but hey, I'm sure the men will figure out a way to make this a weapon of war or spying or something. (Just because someone was mentioning that the women weren't responding. )

There are potentially some cool entertainment applications. A new sort of jumbotron in town. just as digital possibilities continues to tweek filmmaking, this could tweek movie presentation- real or partiallly real time stories, participatory, in the round....real time drama of sports, politics- The dramatic trip down your own colon. Theaters, dance, concerts could jump on this visual presentation in cool ways- odd collaborations, different relationships with audiences. Tholos projection shape could change- not the cylinder but another form more subtle, or more engulfing, or mobile? Of course public artists and advertisers would be all over it too. And a new theme restaurant is always in the works. I think its cool to imagine the current tholos visuals-a space where the environment presented is in sharp contrast to the hosting, surrounding real environment- Its potential to just create an interesting place to be. Grass is always greener an all that.

I think you're on to something, Warch. A resturant you could go to every week and look out on a different exotic local in real time. This week from the top of the Eye-full Tower and next week a tropical island.

I really think that people are just going to be working out ways in which to have sex in front of the things ...

I just thought of some cool shit you could do with this thing:

Project the scenery on it. You walk in, and are looking at downtown Paris or some place.
Project a speeding car coming right for you at like 100mph. Now, with nifty camera work, you could freak people out. Especially if you time it right.

Picture:

You're sitting there jabbering away at some people in Paris, you get used to the surroundings. I mean, it's fully enclosed, they even map the sky and ground to it. For all visual intents and purposes, you are in Paris. People are sitting around you, you've got a table and are sipping a drink.

Suddenly, from around the corner, a car comes flying along, straight for you. People you've been conversing with are freaking the hell out, jumping out of the way.

It's coming right at you.

One of a few things happen:
1) You shit yourself because you can't get out of the way in time.
2) You run and dive out of the way and nail an invisible wall, since after all, you're enclosed in a box.

Think of the fun you could have.

Seriously, the people you're talking to could just as well be sitting looking at monitors. They don't have to be even there. Hell, they don't even have to be in Paris. It could all be done digitally.

The truck that comes flying along could even be done digitally.

Think of the pranks you could pull!

Really though, if you were immersed in this box where it fully in all 360* x 360* of vision (degrees of a sphere), with sky and floor mapped also, you could really forget you were in a box. So you could have a lot of fun with it. And not just by running people over. Heh.

Quzah.

Hell hath frozen over

For the first time recorded since quzah showed up here, I have to agree with him!

I, too, would enjoy (mis)using these things to mess with people's minds and play pranks on hapless foreigners. ESPECIALLY the French.

Will wonders never cease?

Brian

But it should be relatively easy to adapt the technology to project in, instead of out ...

Q does have an interesting idea there ... I'd love to have that kind of technology in a room of the house I want to design, but I have disturbing memories of that Bradbury story ... The Veldt.

I think that it would be cool.

If I'm walking around a park, I might not talk to the other people in the park. They mind their business, and I, mine. However, if I and some guy from afar walked up to a Tholos cylinder, I imagine that we would probably start trying to chat.

That would be about it.

Quote:

Originally posted by xoxoxoBruce Let's see undetermined time + discovery plus 10 or 15 minutes + time it takes police to respond + 5 minutes = Must have been a young couple

Ah Ha, the older woman syndrome. Her name wasn't Robinson, was it?

I don't think you would like Hyder, Syc. You're too cosmopolitan for an unpaved town of less than a hundred people, a million miles from nowhere with feets and feets of rain and snow.
Because there's only one road in and out, there's no American Customs but the Canadians have a post that's about the size of a garage with an overhang over the driveway. There was a pickup with Canadian plates in the driveway and my van wouldn't fit under the overhang anyway, so I parked in the street and walked (20 feet) to the front door. When I pulled up, 3 teenage boys were being escorted inside. One wore a Phlyers jacket so my wife yelled "where'd you get the jacket". Nobody was smiling.
When I went inside they were going through the boy's pockets and curtly told me to return to my vehicle. They searched the pickup thoroughly, 3 times before they released the kids. Evidently the kids in Stewart (BC) get their dope in Hyder.
They went over my van pretty good but didn't find it...er, anything.
That's the only time I've encountered a surly Canadian Border Guard. The American guards are a different matter but that's another story.

You're probably right about Hyder, Bruce. But there's always Anchorage.

That is the basis for the holodeck idea in startrek.

dar - I'll take care of you. Come on by my place, leave the kid with a sitter. Jenni usually closes Friday nights so maybe 6PM. That'd give us a few hours.

      I'm not into the whole yelling thing... I've been horribly misquoted here.

Make it a Saturday. Jenni works 1:30 - 10. 8.5 hours a bit more reasonable?

8.5 hours...now we're talkin.

That's 3 minutes of action, and 8 hours 27 minutes of sobbing apology.

I can usually be counted on for anywhere between 30 minutes and 2 hours of action, so we could have a few go's.

      What makes that really funny is Dar's sig line... "Taking Undertoad's word for it."

Let's put it this way: if you're not crying, you're laughing.