Ravigate
Happy New Year! May 2013 be the best year yet for everyone...
I don’t know what to call it, but I guess "ravigate" is as good as any name. I have been doing it since I read the “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” trilogy series. I did it then and thought that I had visited Stockholm as the result of it. I then read a Monk Mystery series book, and thought that I had visited Paris. Felt like I had visited Paris. But I didn’t think about it much as I did it. I didn’t name it. I just did it — truly without thinking about it.
Then, last week I heard William Gibson, famous computer-sci-fi author, talk about it. And yet he also didn’t give it a name, which is really funny coming from the guy who coined the word “Cyber-space.”
So what am I talking about? Ravigating. Reading while cyber-navigating using Google Earth.
I am talking about identifying a place on this earth (through the reading of a fictional work), and then going to ”visit” that place on Google Earth where you can actually see it and experience it. It does make the reading of the book take longer, but it also enhances the process. And it’s really much fun.
Google is pushing this in the classroom: (http://www.google.com/earth/educators/), and I feel that if I ever go to Stockholm, I’ll be able to give tourists directions.
There are other version of this, like Layar (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b64_16K2e08&feature=player_embedded#), which is the world’s first mobile augmented reality browser. This isn’t the exact same thing, but it is sort of in the same genre.
And then, as long as we are talking about this stuff we should be talking about “locative art,” which I blogged about in 2009. (http://techno-travels.blogspot.com/2009/02/locative-art.html). And which the aforementioned Mr. Gibson wrote about in his book “Spook Country,” and I wrote about in another blog (http://techno-travels.blogspot.com/2007/12/spook-country.html).
All of this stuff makes you begin to wonder a bit about artificial intelligence and how our future is changing — how we will learn differently, how we will see things differently, how we will understand the world around us and what we will prefer to choose in exchange for what we have.
This might be the moment, for some of us, that we choose not to move forward. Where we draw our curmudgeon line in the sand, but I hope you don't — because it really is fun.
I don’t know what to call it, but I guess "ravigate" is as good as any name. I have been doing it since I read the “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” trilogy series. I did it then and thought that I had visited Stockholm as the result of it. I then read a Monk Mystery series book, and thought that I had visited Paris. Felt like I had visited Paris. But I didn’t think about it much as I did it. I didn’t name it. I just did it — truly without thinking about it.
Then, last week I heard William Gibson, famous computer-sci-fi author, talk about it. And yet he also didn’t give it a name, which is really funny coming from the guy who coined the word “Cyber-space.”
So what am I talking about? Ravigating. Reading while cyber-navigating using Google Earth.
I am talking about identifying a place on this earth (through the reading of a fictional work), and then going to ”visit” that place on Google Earth where you can actually see it and experience it. It does make the reading of the book take longer, but it also enhances the process. And it’s really much fun.
Google is pushing this in the classroom: (http://www.google.com/earth/educators/), and I feel that if I ever go to Stockholm, I’ll be able to give tourists directions.
There are other version of this, like Layar (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b64_16K2e08&feature=player_embedded#), which is the world’s first mobile augmented reality browser. This isn’t the exact same thing, but it is sort of in the same genre.
And then, as long as we are talking about this stuff we should be talking about “locative art,” which I blogged about in 2009. (http://techno-travels.blogspot.com/2009/02/locative-art.html). And which the aforementioned Mr. Gibson wrote about in his book “Spook Country,” and I wrote about in another blog (http://techno-travels.blogspot.com/2007/12/spook-country.html).
All of this stuff makes you begin to wonder a bit about artificial intelligence and how our future is changing — how we will learn differently, how we will see things differently, how we will understand the world around us and what we will prefer to choose in exchange for what we have.
This might be the moment, for some of us, that we choose not to move forward. Where we draw our curmudgeon line in the sand, but I hope you don't — because it really is fun.
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