An interesting lawsuit has emerged. Burning Man folks are suing a company called Voyeur Video for selling videos of naked women at Burning Man. It’s not just my love of BM that makes this interesting, but what it means to be in public/private. Here’s a big big festival on public land run by a private organization with explicit rules that all videos must be registered. CNN and MTV have been banned year after year. Yet, this company took lots of images and are selling them, without the permission of the subjects. Is this a public space? A private space? I can’t help but think about what this might mean for general recording and selling of data…

Although i didn’t make it to opening night, i did get to see Minority Report on opening weekend. Although i am not the biggest Tom Cruise fan and i get quite annoyed by Steven Spielberg, i was quite pleasantly surprised. The digital cinematography was fab – good lighting tricks, great filters, perfect layout, good use of fisheye and smart irregular dropping of frames. The plot was well done, although it had a bit of that A.I., let’s-add-on-extra-30-minutes feel, but this was much more bearable. I was quite psyched by the perfect timing of the release of a surveillance film, particularly with it’s thought-provoking take on how the public feels about it. There was a great homage to Stanley Milgram, where everyone stopped what they are doing to be accounted for – obedience to authority at its best. Given some of the corporate systems for eyescanning and finger printing, the big question is: how long until this is a reality? [The better question is, of course, will people rise up to say that this is unacceptable?]

Plus, of course, i appreciated the use of technology, mostly thanks to John Underkoffler. I have to imagine that Hiroshi was shitting his pants on Friday, watching all of his tangible research be pertified for the screen. Plus, i caught a neat little use of Ben Fry‘s Valence piece in an early scene. Yay for Media Lab work looking fab!

For those who are curious about the ML-related work, check out:
– electronic paper (i.e. the animated newspapers)
– laser wall (using lasers to detect hand motion mid-air)
– tangible media (sensor-based objects like the memory chips and balls, gesture work, etc.)
… there are more but this is what comes to mind… it’s just so great to see the research prettified…

All and all, i was quite entertained! [as was roger ebert]

Microsoft is at it again… only this time, they have support fron all the big players (Intel, AMD, Dell, Gateway, etc.). it seems as though they’ve got a plan to make systems full of privacy and security, which seems fab, right? but of course, i’m worried, because somehow i have a feeling that it’s going to be about surveillance of behavior with complete authentication rather than simply making certain that no one gets to your machine that shouldn’t. but maybe i should be a little be more optimistic – this is after all one of the first public announcements…

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