Apparently, when the technologies of virtual reality are put in service of the mass market imagination, you've got something you can get truly Oaqui about.
That, in sum, is what I learned at E3, the Electronic Entertainment Exposition that was held last week-end in Los Angeles.
The uncanny realism of a growing number of virtual blood sports, for example. Why (said a fellow fascinatee as we stood before a videowall display of a near-naked Ninjette disembowel the Hulking He-Thing with her nine-inch heels) you can tell the difference between cotton and silk!
What was least/most Oaqui for me about this mind- and foot-numbing tour of the vasty LA convention center, was the inescapability of the conclusion: given the increasing richness of the technology, the mass imagination becomes increasingly limited. The largest, most laser-lit, loudly cloudmaking booths were pretty much singly devoted to interactive images of violence and death.
Stupefying technology for the stupid.
On the other hand, even though I currently happen to be a genuinely paid consultant for Mattel Media, I have to unbiasedly admit that there are some major players who, like Mattel, are majorly playing. In the best of Oaqui* traditions. Fully focusing their vast and virtual prowess on the creation of images of beauty and acts of empowerment.
Barbie's Fashion Designer, for example, from Mattel it's swell Media, is a kinda CAD-CAM dress-making software for girls. The kid can dress a virtual Barbie in skirts and pants and blouses and dresses in a whole bunch of different colors and patterns. And then see that very outfit on a vividly 3-D Runway-Walking Barbie. And print that very outfit onto a special color-laser-printer-safe cloth. Mattel says that the excitement that this product has generated has helped Mattel create a new marketing truism: "computers are cool for girls." And I believe them.
I also wandered away from the show, into an upstairs private meeting room where Fujitsu's new product was being displayed to the fortunate few. I shook many hands before I found myself sitting in a plush chair by the teriyaki bar discoursing with my personal blonde starlet whilst interfacing, via voice and movement, with a virtual flying dolphin. Sometime later (as I found myself on the escalator to the main halls, carrying a calendar, calling cards, and a plush fish) I was forced to conclude that there is hope for the collective intelligence. The dance between entertainment and electronics can produce some extraordinary graceful and profitable moments, and I applaud companies like Mattel and Fujitsu for showing the way.
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