Monday, August 01, 2005
Missing Nian
Time to get into the habit of updating my blog. For those that haven’t visited BNL before I should explain that for the last two weeks of Nian’s stay here in Champaign, Illinois we pretty much spent every last remaining moment together, an emotionally trying time for both of us, especially the Wednesday departure for LA from Chicago Midway. Nian isn’t back in China yet, but will be after a two-week visit with her brother and his wife in Los Angeles.Before I met Nian I had to struggle to find things to write about, and now so much has happened in the last month, I find myself overwhelmed in trying to chronicle it. Our marriage plans are still on track, if somewhat undefined in execution.
Last night was a first for me -- I downloaded MSN Messenger, hooked up my camera and had my first video messaging session with Nian last night. I had seen Nian video message with her mother and daughter several times from China and last night I was doing it with Nian from Champaign to LA. It struck me as a little odd that having grown up in the 60s and 70s that videophones had arrived far later than the World Expos of the 60s had promised, but now that they have arrived they have arrived worldwide virtually all at the same time thanks to the internet. Not only has the internet made them possible, but shows the power of building innovations on top of an improving infrastructure powered by Moore’s law. I could have had a jerky postage stamp sized video of Nian to teleconference with 10 years ago, but today it is a full screen, full resolution experience. Granted there is a half second delay, and the frame rate is still only 5 to 10 frames per second, but I expect this too will improve in the near future. In fact assuming broadband continues to improve I would be very much surprised if full frame-rate HDTV resolution video phoning and teleconferencing didn’t become common in ten years time. Assuming some kind of Wi-Fi infrastructure could handle 10 megabit per second connections, it might be normal for people to HDTV share their vacations and travels in real-time with family, friends, and associates.
G oogle Maps continues improve at a rapid pace, I could see some very near future enhancement to tie the grid of security cameras deployed throughout large cities into some kind of real-time virtual tour of any city, warping, painting, projecting real views onto the Google 3D map representation of the cityscapes. Some areas frozen in time where no active camera covers, others bustling with live activity, still others some faux reality overlain for purposes of advertisement and promotion (expect lawsuits over this last one, about how, when, and where to preempt the presentation of reality in a virtualized presentation). If there is enough storage, virtual cityscapes could be saved in time as well allowing you virtual time-travel back to significant events. Likely this would be done to varying degrees of fidelity depending on the importance of events, and would have areas of interest with more time slices to sample. Already I imagine that the 3D layout of the city itself is quickly being extrapolating backwards through time as we speak, though the software to index and playback these time isolated representations is fragmented, non-uniform, and unavailable as of yet to the general public, but I would be very surprised if Google Maps didn’t evolve to encompass them.
A century ago, we would have had to wait weeks to communicate by letter between China and America, a decade ago Nian and I would only have had an analog representation of voice carried through copper wire to connect us in real time, today a VHS resolution equivalent videoconference, a decade from now perhaps, when physically separated, we will be able to wander side by side through distant cities in HDTV resolution, glancing over to one another and pointing out the sights and wonders to one another as we explore. Of course this future vision still doesn’t include touch, and for all its promise of keeping people in contact with more immediacy and impact, it still falls far short of real life. I’ll still be missing my Nian.
