A virtual boy who might be the best friend you'll ever have

Ok, so we're all going crazy about the nearing of the release of Kinect, formerly known as Microsoft Natal, the gaming platform that uses your entire body as the controller. One of its foremost applications lets you interact with and follow the life of an 'actual' virtual boy. What's more, it's created by Peter Molyneux, who we all know as the mind behind the God game 'Black and White'.

The boy's name is Milo, and does what most boys do. He plays with snails, throws stones in the water, draws pictures, and argues with his mother. He has recently moved with his parents to a new house, so he needs new friends. Now you step in. With your body and speech you enter into Milo's world, where you can talk to him, play with him, help him clean his room, and follow him around the house. Like most kids, Milo talks to himself a lot, commenting on the situation, so you know what he's thinking. And also like most kids, Milo is not home all the time; he has a life outside too. This makes him not always available for you to interact with, just like a real person. It's quite like a really intimate version of the Sims, but one where it's stops being a game, or entertainment altogether. This is interpersonal human life virtualized.

Not much has been released on how 'human' Milo will feel, but from what we see in the demos that have been given, including the one recently at TED, we must conclude that the people at Lionhead have done a really good job. One of the intriguing features built into Milo is that the longer people collectively interact with Milo, the more his mind will grow. So Milo will really be like a global mind, instantiating itself as a separate character in your living room.

If Milo develops very much like a real human being, and people can come to feel as if he is a real friend, even their best friend, then this pretty immediately questions what 'humanness' is. By becoming aware of the mechanics of emotion and personality, Milo and its human companion might come to wake up to transpersonal realizations and have existential breakthroughs. As such, Milo might evolve into a piece of ultimate self-help technology that no other friend can replace. As Molyneux remarks, there's a boundary to friendship, determined by the amount of time that you can be comfortably quiet in presence of the other person.

To me, the ultimate experiment of Milo is whether he can become people's true friend, having an unconditional love for each other, and actively co-evolving with each other through life.

Embodied CAD modeling

When richer input devices emerge for human-computer interaction, applications like this physical CAD modeling system may come to the market. This tool was developed by Damon Millar as a first concept towards a physical modeling system with degrees of manipulation that we cannot yet imagine. Once we really bring the 4th dimension directly into the modeling system, we come a true cyborg craftsman with the ability to create anything we like in a matter of minutes.

the electronic craftsman

'l'Artisan electronique', or the electronic craftsman, is an installation that lets people craft an object similarly to how a potter uses a pottery wheel. The only difference is that the process is simulated digitally, and users get visual feedback on a screen. At the end of the process, the finished digital file is printed by a 3d printer. We indeed seem to be heading to a new age of arts and crafts, where the physicality of the materials is simulated, so we can use any software tool to create whatever we like.

Microsoft Natal, full body virtual reality

With Microsoft's Natal project, a markerless full body motion and facial expression capture system for the Xbox 360, virtual reality is coming close to the real thing. The body becomes the interface, and you become the virtual character. Thus, we have nearly created the perfect fake world to escape into from our real lives. This is a great development, finally virtual reality is coming to a fully embodied stage, and when we can live it we can also come to see how it's only a niche of what we can do with new technologies. Moreover, we can come to see more clearly what new purposes these technologies can serve and how they can uplift us in our lives. I might just wait for the Natal system to become available by next Christmas, and play my friend's Wii's for now instead. There is something disturbing about girls playing virtual soccer in a densely furnished living room though.