Tuesday, September 25, 2007

the inter-geo-digi-space

A while ago I posted an article about EA's video game which features real, live weather conditions: another great example of the merging of physical and digital worlds. But my excitement about this cross-dimensional medium was over-shadowed by my desire to give it a good name.

Faris pointed me to his take on it and the name Interlife, which he confessed didn't quite satisfy. Faris beat me to the topic by 12 months - I'm a slow typer - so I thought I'd try to make a more worthwhile contribution by coming up with a more pleasing moniker.

My thinking goes like this:

Both Interlife and Geoweb (which really concerns geographical data specifically) feel like 'places', whereas for me, this interplay between the physical and digitally connected worlds is not so much a location as a medium.

I've been trying to think of a metaphor where something that operates on another dimension/plane intersects with something else. It's a bit like when Jeff Goldblum, in The Fly, has his genes merge with the insect -- that kind of genetic modification feels in the right kind of area. Think of it as the genetics of the physical world being tampered with by digital information. Or vice versa.



So perhaps this will cut it. Let me know what you think:


REALCODING
Real-world modification through digital re-engineering
or
Digital modification through real-world re-engineering


or maybe a juicier way of saying it is:

MEATHACKING
Digitally hacking the real world (meatspace)

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1 Comments:

Blogger faris said...

I love meathacking - but to me that sounds more like messing with someone's head - soft machine and that.

hmmm. it's kinda like the pervasive web thing we used to talk about a lot - when the web is everywhere.

web 3.0? ;-p

4:54 pm  

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