Design:
- Real time application of a style input (using a simple sphere as a reference point) to complex 3D models and animations. It's an amazing bit of technology, though looking to the past in mimicking of analog aesthetics seems like an odd way to show it off.
Virtually There:
- Aware of how the awful power of online harassment is augmented by virtual reality, some companies are building in personal space bubbles by default. It's great to see designers and engineers picking up early signals of trouble in technologies and working to build features that limit the reach of bad actors from the start.
- The variety of sensors present in VR headsets can provide software developers with incredibly detailed information about the wearer's state of mind, how their body is responding to stimuli, and other data that is both useful and potentially invasive. Responsive software could automatically tune itself for optimal addiction or a data breach might provide con artists with insights into your brain's particular desires and fears. Since consumer oriented wearable technology started flirting with providing pseudo-medical data logging and analysis privacy has been a perennial concern. When we move from tracking our steps to mapping our (normally private) emotions, the stakes are much higher.
Solutions from Down the Supply Chain:
- The sprawling investigations of supply chains and labor practices that go into making a complex piece of technology like a smartphone in something like an ethical way. The real brilliance of the Fairphone project is making repair/refurbishment intrinsic to the design and engineering, supporting circular economy practices in what is normally a fast tracking of scarce resources from open pit mines to landfills, with a lot of human exploitation along the way.