Virtual communities
At the TV technology lunchon yesterday Ira Flatow, TV journalist and host of “Talk the Nation,” gave the opening remarks. He joked about how TV has changed so much. He said, at the start of TV, we were all squinting at a tiny black and white screen, and we wanted something bigger and better. Since then we’ve evolved to amazing picture clarity on huge sized displays. But now we WANT to watch video on tiny screens, as more and more people are watching mobile TV on handheld devices. Someone in the audience shouted out “Back to the Future.”
Flatow also discussed the use of avatars during an audio podcast he hosts called “Science Friday” for National Public Radio (NPR). NPR has created a virtual reality community where you literally create a virtual “you” and join a virtual community.
Is this something that TV stations will eventually do as well? I’d be interested to see.
Watch a video of Ira Flatow at the Technology Luncheon on Broadcast Engineering TV.
For more information, visit http://www.sciencefriday.com/, http://www.sciencefriday.com/pages/2007/Aug/hour2_083107.html and http://www.sciencefriday.com/video/090707/virtualworlds090707.html.
