The Revolution is Nigh!
via: SimpleBits
I just watched a fascinating video from Blaise Aguera y Arcas (via ted.com) on some new technology from Microsoft Labs. This new technology is called “Photosynth” and it aggregates the collective memory into a model of reality. If that doesn’t make any sense, check out the demo: http://labs.live.com/photosynth/default.html. This software takes a collection of images from a social networking site (Flickr in this case) with common metadata (tags). It then puts all of these images together into a model of that metadata, amazing!
Consider that every person’s memory (photo, video or textual) is placed into a collective via the various social networking services. Consider that this collective is accessible through APIs. Consider that you can aggregate the entire collective. Consider that you can take the aggregated memory of everyone and categorize, filter, extrapolate, correlate and relate it. Consider that you can now model the world based on the aggregated memory of everyone.
Once this happens, virtual models will become real models. Instead of animating the world to model it, you will model the world based on the collective memory of the world. Every picture ever taken of a giraffe will allow for a model of a giraffe to be created from real pictures of giraffes. Every picture taken of a Nissan Skyline GT-R can be used to create an exact model of a Nissan Skyline GT-R. Amazing stuff!
