The Pumpkin-Tipping Point?
Apparently this has been floating around out there since before Halloween, but I just now stumbled across it:
Introducing the guyPhone!
Now, aside from this being an absolutely awesome Halloween costume, what strikes me more than anything is just the fact that A/V/phone/computing technology has all advanced to the point where this sort of thing is even possible. Keep in mind that, while these costumes are still a little cumbersome, even one or two years ago, this would have been completely unfeasible for anybody who didn't have a million-dollar production budget and a custom fabrication facility. And now some guy can build it in his back room with off-the-shelf components for around $1000.
Indeed, we've seen amazing revolutions in just the past few years in all kinds of areas: display sizes, weight, resolution, and even flexibility, large-scale touch-sensitive surfaces, impressively powerful CPUs and GPUs in pocket-sized devices, high-speed local and wide-area radio and wired communications standards. Battery power and weight is marching steadily forward. And of course it's all getting amazingly cheap. We're rapidly approaching the point, perhaps in only the next few years, where costumes like this could be mass-produced, and likely at a price that would make it worthwhile to do so. And not just costumes like this. All kinds of other tech-enabled, multimedia-extravaganza sort of things too.
What will costumes look like 5 or 10 years from now? Could we be looking down the barrel at a revolutionizing of Halloween costumes the likes of which hasn't been seen since the advent of plastics? I don't know, but I do think it'll be interesting to see what happens..
Introducing the guyPhone!
Now, aside from this being an absolutely awesome Halloween costume, what strikes me more than anything is just the fact that A/V/phone/computing technology has all advanced to the point where this sort of thing is even possible. Keep in mind that, while these costumes are still a little cumbersome, even one or two years ago, this would have been completely unfeasible for anybody who didn't have a million-dollar production budget and a custom fabrication facility. And now some guy can build it in his back room with off-the-shelf components for around $1000.
Indeed, we've seen amazing revolutions in just the past few years in all kinds of areas: display sizes, weight, resolution, and even flexibility, large-scale touch-sensitive surfaces, impressively powerful CPUs and GPUs in pocket-sized devices, high-speed local and wide-area radio and wired communications standards. Battery power and weight is marching steadily forward. And of course it's all getting amazingly cheap. We're rapidly approaching the point, perhaps in only the next few years, where costumes like this could be mass-produced, and likely at a price that would make it worthwhile to do so. And not just costumes like this. All kinds of other tech-enabled, multimedia-extravaganza sort of things too.
What will costumes look like 5 or 10 years from now? Could we be looking down the barrel at a revolutionizing of Halloween costumes the likes of which hasn't been seen since the advent of plastics? I don't know, but I do think it'll be interesting to see what happens..