Deus Ex Machinatio

Augmented Reality & the iPhone

Augmented reality still has the aura to it of a far-future technology, something eternally five, ten, even twenty years away. But the truth is that we have the tech right now. I'm sure you've all seen GE's fun augmented reality demonstration. Or maybe Hidden Park. Or how about Kweekies? That's just a trickle compared to the flood we'll be seeing by this time next year.

AR hasn't taken the center stage yet, to be sure; but since it's inevitably coming, this means we're in for this decade's biggest and most significant format war. Forget HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray; who cares about dead media when digital distribution is the future anyway? No, the next big format war is one of platform, and has more in common with Xbox vs. PlayStation, or Mac vs. Windows.

A cabal of high-profile AR developers and researchers have come together to fire the first big shot across the bow in this looming battle. They've written an open letter to Apple asking the company to open up the iPhone SDK to provide developers with a public API to manipulate live video in real time. This is a crucial tool that would make the iPhone a powerhouse for mobile augmented reality applications. If you can't access live video, the device just can't access reality in order to augment it, so to speak.

I don't know if Apple will do it; they're a company that take their walled gardens very seriously. But hey, Apple, I think it would be a foolish business move not to. Developers are on your doorstep begging for the chance to make your device the go-to platform for mobile computing -- and you can give it to them now, not five years from now. How can you possibly turn that down?

Racebending

I've talked about gender issues here before, but really, all elements of social justice are important to me. Gender, gender identity, sexuality, and of course good old-fashioned race exist in a dazzling variety of combinations, and they all deserve respectful representation in media. This is something I learned how to do at the knee of Naomi Alderman, and I hope to continue it as long as I work (which will probably be as long as there is breath in my body). Perplex City was a place where men and women existed in equal numbers in authority roles; where gay relationships -- and, yes, marriages -- were celebrated as much as hetero; where skins and faces and hair came in all colors, textures, and configurations, and not much was made of it. Not bad for a quietly but profoundly xenophobic city-state, don't you think?

Around my house, we're all big fans of the cartoon Avatar: The Last Airbender. (Bear with me, I'll tie it all together in a minute.) We watched every episode, bought the video games, evangelized to our friends, and in general were the kind of consumers that any IP property longs to have. When we found out there was going to be a live-action film, we were cautious but excited; when we found out M. Night Shyamalan was on board to direct, we were frankly a bit skeptical, but still willing to give it a shot out of sheer loyalty to the franchise.  

Why did we love this show so much? It's hard to say. The writing was tight, surprisingly deep and sophisticated for a children's cartoon. Avatar actually examines the themes of good and evil at some length, and there is a whole season establishing that the people living in a nation with aggressive leadership are still just regular (and sympathetic) people. We loved the research that went into it -- four distinct styles of martial arts for the four types of 'bending.' We loved the original and heavily Asian-inspired world and aesthetic. I particularly loved that there are girls in active roles, both as heroes and villains. The show was like a breath of fresh air, even/especially to withered cynics like me who despair of getting my girls out of the pink ghetto of consumerism and incredibly strict gender roles. Last year, my daughter chose karate over ballet, and I'm sure Avatar influenced her decision.

But the news out of The Last Airbender film is bad, and it keeps getting worse. The problem? Casting.

See, in Avatar-the-cartoon, there simply isn't a white face on the show. It's all shades of brown and yellow. You see thinly-veiled renderings of Inuit and Chinese cultures, very specifically, with the people from them colored to match. I loved this to pieces (I was shocked to find this show was made in America, and not an import). The world is a big place, my friends, and I'd like my children to grow up knowing that not everybody looks like them, and that's OK. More important, I'd like all of those children in the world who are brown and yellow (and black and red, too) to get to see people on the screen like themselves, who are good people doing great things. And then the film announced who it had cast for the leading roles. And by now you see where this is going: They were white, every one of 'em. Nary even a suntan in the bunch. That's standard-op Hollywood racism right there; it happened with Earthsea, too.

Now, this was pretty awful, and people were justifiably upset about it, so the powers that be behind the film decided on a change of course and recast a role to a minority actor -- one. You know who he plays? Zuko, the bad guy. So suddenly a show that was all about the strength and beauty of Asian cultures and the interplay between them has turned into a movie where three white folks are battling a brown menace. I'm sure I don't need to draw you a diagram to explain why I find this problematic. This is just as awful as if they had kept the all-white casting -- and arguably it's a lot worse.

Fortunately, there are actions you can take to try to get the studio's head on straight. For a more thorough explanation of the problem here, including some historical information on screen shots, please see Racebending. They have a fantastic list of resources on things you can do to protest, from signing a petition and joining a Facebook group to writing to Paramount Pictures to contacting local media. 

Let's make some noise over this, people, and see if we can get it fixed. I'd really hate to have to skip the movie over this, but if nothing changes, me and a lot of other people will be staying home when it comes out.

Happy Ada Lovelace Day

Today, March 24, is Ava Lovelace Day, "an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology." I'm thrilled to see the day getting lots of publicity. If you've been following along here at DeusXM, you know that issues of gender equality are near and dear to my heart.

I signed the pledge weeks ago, intending to write about Roberta Williams, pioneering game designer and co-founder of Sierra On-Line. When you wax nostalgic for the halcyon days of King's Quest, you should take a second to think of Roberta and be grateful for her contributions to the canon of modern computer gaming.

But one of the things I absolutely love about the ARG community is the way it has historically attracted girls and women, both as players and as developers. So let me shout out to some of the women working in our cutting-edge, innovative field, who are excelling in technology and showing little girls that yes, they can come to the party, too. In no particular order, I give you:

• Jan Libby
• Maureen McHugh 
• Naomi Alderman 
• Krystyn Wells 
• Marie Lamb 
• Wendy Despain 
• Dee Cook 
• Brooke Thompson 
• Geneviève Cardin  
• Michelle Senderhauf 
• and (of course) Jane McGonigal 

Every one of these women has done something amazing, and I expect further amazement as the days go by.

If you're a woman who makes ARGs and I've left you off the list, I'm so sorry! I mean no disrespect; this is just the few I thought of on the spur of the moment -- and the fact that the list is as long as it is is a massive credit to us all, don't you think? But consider this an open thread to talk up the women in tech you admire -- particularly the women in games in general and ARGs in specific -- even if that woman is yourself.

Updated to add: So of course I leave off Kim Plowright, who has been my link to sanity lo these many months during the Routes development cycle and run. Sorry, Kim! You know I loves you!

Update 2: And of course Catherine Herdlick, too. Sheesh!

Breaking Up With Facebook

After this post, I'm going to pull the feed that lets all of my Typepad posts here at DeusXM get sucked into Facebook. I'll still let Twitter update my Facebook status, and I Tweet the URL of most of my blog entries, so those of you interested in following my blog should still get some notification. But you'll have to click through out of Facebook to actually read.

Why? Well, Facebook has changed its terms of service. Time was if you deleted your content from Facebook, that acted as revoking Facebook's license to your material. Now, they've got an irrevocable, transferable, in-perpetuity license to the stuff you put there. I really don't feel like giving them perpetual licenses to my words and photos, so I'm pulling the plug on photos and blog posts.

And here's a little word of advice to Facebook: Users aren't stupid, and they can tell when you don't respect them. If you want to keep that phenomenal market share you've soaked up in the last couple of years, you'd better start working really hard to make sure users have a good reason not to ditch you as soon as the next hot thing comes along.

People I Admire Week

Given my last post on Teresa Nielsen Hayden and a post to go up shortly on Amanda Palmer, I've decided to make this a full-blown People I Admire Week here at DeusExEm. If you want to play along, that would be just peachy; feel free to link to yourself in the comments. I'd love to see who you all are looking up to these days!

Here are the rules I'm using. If you're playing the home game, of course you can play by your own rules, but I think this framework will lead us toward much more interesting responses:

1. Friends and family don't count. It would be easy to fill a week with the obvious stuff: I could say I admire Sean Stewart and Jan Libby, my mom and dad, Naomi Alderman and the Brothers Hon. But I want to dig a little deeper, here. If you know somebody well enough to have their IM information, or if they'd likely know who you were if your name came up in conversation, you know them too well for this purpose.


2. You really want to be like them. Look, we all admire Mother Teresa, but not many of us get fired up over giving our lives over to helping the sick and poor. I want this admiration to be actionable in a more than theoretical way.


3. Your lifetime and their lifetime have to at least overlap at the edges. Even better if the person you admire is still alive! This keeps out people we've been taught by rote to admire since we were small; your Abe Lincoln and Jesus, Isaac Newton and Benjamin Franklin and Hammurabi. I want to hear about admiration you probably don't have in common with millions of other people.


4. They have to be real people. Seriously, folks, no Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Captain Kirk, OK?

We're cool? Awesome. Ready... set... go!

Using Games to Make Everything Better

In this season of high political drama, there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth going on over the U.S. budget and economy. I know many of us have thought if we had a crack at it, by gum, we could balance that there budget. C'mon, guys, tell me it isn't just me. Hubris? Maybe, maybe not. But now is your chance to try!

Welcome to Budget Hero, a game from American Public Media that lets you try your hand at balancing the budget, slashing the national debt, and saving our sorry buttocks from a looming financial armageddon. Check it out and see if you have what it takes. My takeaway from it: Some pretty comprehensive tax reform looks necessary to do... well... much of anything differently. Fascinating stuff.

(Link found via Consumerist, and thanks to them for covering it.) 

Reading: Fundamental or Not So Much?

I've just discovered that the Reading is Fundamental program is being jeopardized by serious funding cuts. (Apparently I'm a little late to the party; honestly I'm not sure how it's escaped my attention as long as all this.) Now, ordinarily I try to keep political and professional matters mostly separate, but in this case, the politics cut so close to the heart of what makes me who I am, personally and professionally, that I just can't let it go.

If I may quote myself from elsewhere:

My life has been incredibly shaped by the power of the word, and it would be a damn shame if a child missed out on the kinds of opportunities I've enjoyed because his or her mother was smart enough to know that buying a book isn't as important as buying the milk. Please contact your congressional representation and ask them to preserve the funding for this venerable and well-regarded initiative.

So yeah. Click the link, follow the instructions, happy happy. And thanks.