05 Dec 09 MySpace, Times Skimmer and Your Video of the Day

Techmeme leads today with what it should: a fascinating look at MySpace in the context of its acquisition by News Corp. The article looks at the demise of MySpace at the hands of Facebook, of course, but it’s about a lot more than that.

The New York Times today is promoting on its homepage the Times Skimmer. It’s a neat way of viewing the news on your screen in as close of a way to print as possible. It reminds me of FastFlip, and while it’s cool, I’m not sure I’ll be switch anytime soon. Maybe it’s just because I’ve taught my eyes to jump across the text on the regular lay-out, or maybe it’s because I don’t miss the old print-style format all that much.

This tangentially reminds me of a conversation I had this week with my roommate. After coming back from work we sat down in front of the TV to watch the Civil War. He commented that he spends a LOT of time in front of an LCD screen. We click around during working hours, come back to our apartment and watch sports and then even before we go to bed, we set our alarms on our phones. It wasn’t so much a sad revelation as it was simply a truthful statement, but it got me thinking from a Singularity perspective: What happens as we spend more and more of our time in front of screens? I’m not talking about the classic passive-active discussion about watching the boob tube (or YouTube). That’s not even it. I mean, from a physiological perspective, what are we heading towards?

Perhaps we’ll all soon have AR in our contact lenses and render the need to stare at a liquid crystal display moot. Perhaps not. But I do think a great number of non-trivial, and increasing, hours in the day for a great number of global citizens (in the developed world) are being spent in front of a screen, and that will mean some big changes for us.

I leave you with your video of the day, and what a gem it is. Behold, the ultimate in mash-ups: “Poker Face” performed by Lady Gaga…and Cartman and Christopher Walken:

Tags: AR, augmented reality, christopher walken, civil war, Facebook, google fastflip, lady gaga, lcd, myspace, nytimes, oregon state, rupert murdock, singularityu, south park, university of oregon, YouTube