Brave New Media

Another speaker we had in class today was Vadim Isakov, and he gave a presentation on new media. Not only was I shocked by some of the media that has been around that I didn't even know about, but I was thinking about how it's going to be in 10 or 20 years. Vadim told us about how Google has a free service 1-800-GOOG-411, and if you have any questions about pizza places near you or whatever information you need, Google offers it and you won't have to pay the expensive fees that 411 charges. BUT the reason why Google is doing this, is so they can have as many voices as they can recorded. They want to use the recorded voices to have web browsers use voice recognition, but isn't it a scary thought to know that Google knows our voices? I think so. Vadim was also showing us the "Augmented Reality" version of Esquire magazine, which was awesome to see this 3-D version of the magazine and the impressive content and design aspects of it. There is so much new media out there that I don't even know about, the music website midomi.com which allows for you to hum or sing a song that you like and they will find it for you, well depending on how well you hum or sing. At the end of the presentation, my professor Jeff Cohen, noted that it felt a little like Brave New World. It got me thinking that 10 years ago, cell phones were new, and now cell phones are so advanced with applications for everything and internet access at the touch of a button, what is the new technology going to be when I'm 30, 40, or 50? I bet it will be pretty scary, especially when I have to use the "When I was in college, they were just coming out with voice recognition web browsers," because who knows what it will be like at that time. Let's just hope that Google doesn't become like the Big Brother in Brave New World, but with the amount of information they have on each person, I don't think as far away from that as we'd like to think.