Boston Common too boring? AR game reveals "The Hidden Park"

Posted on June 29, 2009 by Mark Baard

My bit in the Globe this morning, about an augmented reality game for kids, which adds dragons, fairies, trolls and the like, to your iPhone’s camera view:

As you photograph various landmarks around the Common, you’ll find Hidden Park cartoon characters appearing in your shots. When you’re done, you will have an album full of things you never really saw. I think of it as meeting Walt Disney characters, without worrying about who might be lurking inside the suit.

via Hidden Park on iPhone turns Common outing into a fantastic adventure – The Boston Globe.

Protect the head

Posted on April 22, 2009 by Mark Baard

A new videogame for the iPhone overrides instinctive compassion. Photo: CC/sean dreilinger

A small sign of our psychopathic, degenerate, times: An iPhone app that promotes shaking babies to death, to stop their crying.

So obviously child abuse is no laughing matter … and maybe it’s just us, but we would never even joke about child abuse and use it as a form of entertainment. Maybe we’re just square pegs and out of the norm because apparently Apple and the folks at Sikalosoft think shaking a baby is funny. Head to the App Store … and search the Entertainment category … there you will find the Baby Shake iPhone app.

via KRAPPS Reviews The Baby Shake iPhone App From Sikalosoft | KRAPPS.

The game’s been yanked by Apple. But you can see a video of the stupid, stomach churning, game, here.

Missouri cop says only pervs own "kid's games"

Posted on March 19, 2009 by Mark Baard

I am very wary of social networking anything aimed at kids–and there a lot of virtual worlds and interactive games out there, specifically for tweens and younger kids.

But I don’t know a six-year-old (including my own) who actually “owns” a video game. That’s because moms and dads are the ones that pay for them.

According to the Missouri cop’s reasoning, as described in this bit (below), if you use your credit card to purchase one of these games, you’d be on his list of pedophiles.

Police in Missouri have put a new twist on age-inappropriate gaming by saying there is “no reason” adults would own games like Animal Crossing unless they’re using them as pedophile bait.

“There is no reason an adult should have this game,” said Task Force Coordinator Andy Anderson. He added that adults who own Animal Crossing and similar games likely have them for “the wrong reasons.” Evil, child-molesting reasons, no doubt.

Susan Arendt of The Escapist noted that direct communication between players could only take place under certain, easily controlled circumstances. “You can’t talk to anyone unless you have their friend code,” she said, prompting at least one observer to wonder exactly how, and why, she knows so much about the game.

via The Escapist : News : Police Say Adults Shouldn’t Own Animal Crossing.

The internet "thinks," and the hive mind rules

Posted on April 17, 2007 by Mark Baard

Guilty, says the collective

This kid, pictured above, tells ABC News today, “Right now pretty much the internet thinks it is me.” (Excerpt and link, below.)

He’s been receiving death threats and hate mail since the shooting at Virginia Tech yesterday. His passion for firearms, his personal circumstances and Web 2.0 chatter in blog services, chat rooms and Twitter, have conspired to link him to the mass shooting yesterday.

Meanwhile, marketers and tech journalists are busy parroting the Web 2.0 message–that groups, not individuals, will produce the internet’s “content” through their “collective intelligence”–at a convention this week in San Francisco.

Many more individuals (such as those with non-politically correct hobbies) will find themselves in opposition to what the Institute for the Future‘s Jane McGonigal calls this “collective life worth living.”

McGonigal this week is speaking on the subject of “hacking happiness.” She says her work is based on the positive psychology movement started by UPenn professor Marty Seligman.

McGonigal’s quest for human happiness has its roots in animal suffering.

In 1965, Seligman conducted sadistic animal experiments–including trapping and shocking dogs in cages–to show that animals learn helplessness, according to a recent audio blurb by Alan Watt, and an article in the Economist.

clipped from blogs.abcnews.com

He is Asian, he lived in the dorm where the first shooting occurred and he recently broke up with his girlfriend — he also happens to have a web blog packed with pictures in which he poses with firearms. On the Internet, Wayne Chiang is as good as convicted.

“Right now pretty much the Internet thinks it is me, Chiang told ABC News. “I am just interested in trying to clear my name.

Brain-chipped mobs a military threat

Posted on April 9, 2007 by Mark Baard

Just following orders: Brazilian flash mob

The British Ministry of Defense describes its new report on future strategic threats as “probability-based, rather than predictive.” The two sound the same to me. It’s the Brits’ best guess at what the future holds.

The predictions also jibe with Alan Watt‘s predictions for widespread human brain-chipping, which the MoD expects by 2035.

The MoD report refers to masses of brain-chipped humans–mobilized by governments or gangsters–as “flashmobs.”

Today, flash mobs, such as those organized in 2003 by alternate reality games “queen bee” Jane McGonigal, seem harmless enough. Flash mobbers in major cities use cell phones and the internet to meet in the street, where they flash disconcerting, Nazi-like salutes (see the Brazilian flash mob, above) and have pillow fights.

But what will it take to replace those pillows with clubs? Perhaps not much, given the right signal to a brain chip, or even a cell phone.

clipped from www.guardian.co.uk

Revolution, flashmobs, and brain chips. A grim vision of the future

Information chips implanted in the brain. Electromagnetic pulse weapons. The middle classes becoming revolutionary, taking on the role of Marx’s proletariat. The population of countries in the Middle East increasing by 132%, while Europe’s drops as fertility falls. “Flashmobs” – groups rapidly mobilised by criminal gangs or terrorists groups.This is the world in 30 years’ time envisaged by a Ministry of Defence team responsible for painting a picture of the “future strategic context” likely to face Britain’s armed forces. It includes an “analysis of the key risks and shocks”.

Sony's alternate reality, "Home"

Posted on April 9, 2007 by Mark Baard

Got this today from one of my journalism students:”A buddy of mine back home showed me a demo of this over Easter. It reminded me immediately of second life (video and link, below), but with very distinct and interesting differences.”

Atari also is working on its own virtual/alternate reality.

clipped from www.youtube.com

[youtube=http://youtube.com/w/?v=8ZY2vwlh5-g]

Corporations will push humans into alternate realities

Posted on April 4, 2007 by Mark Baard

The world’s largest corporations, including Procter & Gamble, Siemens, Motorola and Time Warner, may be planning to port our individual consciousnesses over to machine-generated alternate realities (think Second Life).

The companies will use embedded sensors and displays, RFID tags and other tracking devices, and brain implants as the real-to-virtual gateway through which humans will either jump, or be pushed.

That is, of course, if you believe that think tanks not only predict the future, but actually shape it (link and excerpt, below).

The Institute for the Future predicts “a culture of layered realities” marked by the “intermingling of alternate-reality games and real-life interactions in physical–digital space,” in its 2005-2015 “Map of the Decade.”

P&G and the other companies are IFTF members. Rand Corp. researchers, backed by the Ford Foundation, founded the futurist think tank in 1968.

IFTF is headed by one of the fathers of the internet, Jacques Vallée. (He also happens to be one of the world’s leading UFO experts. Vallée was among several prominent ufologists at a GWU symposium I covered for Wired in 2002.)

Now Jane McGonigal, a developer and expert on ubiquitous technologies (a category that includes arfids and embedded sensors) and alternate reality games, is on the IFTF payroll.

“As a futures forecaster,” reads one line from McGonigal’s bio, “I explore how games might be used to virtualize everyday life.”

clipped from tecfa.unige.ch

Influences of forecasts

“While think tanks play many roles, an example that brings home their importance now and in the future is the increasing interest in long-range forecasting and thinking about the future. (…) What we must realize now is that as institutions assume the formal role of casting about in the future, they dramatically increase their influence on that future. Simply put, if a think tanks tells its sponsors and others willing to listen that X, Y and Z will occur by the year 2000, then X, Y, and Z are more likely to occur as policy and technological goals adapt to those predictions“

Paul Dickson, Think Tanks, Ballantine Books, 1972.

Self-styled mind control expert terrorized

Posted on March 27, 2007 by Mark Baard

Supposed tech and marketing whiz Kathy Sierra won’t be attending a San Diego tech trade conference, saying she’s been threatened by her enemies, including this one.

Here’s a blurb about the session ETech 2007 attendees won’t be getting:

“Whether you’re looking to increase participation on your web site, build a passionate community around your product, help students learn more effectively, or recruit evangelists for your cause, we’ll work step-by-step on a plan for getting there.” Continue reading →

The Sci-Tech Heretic

Science, fiction and news through the conspiratorial lens. By Mark Baard in Boston.

Tag Archives: Video games