Dad, I want a HyperRoom!!.
By Prof. Jaap van Till
vantill@gmail.com
One of my hobbies is to coin new words and phrases. For things that are not necessarily new, but which become visible but had no name yet. For instance, years ago I coined “EuroHub” which turned into the GigaPort project and the Amsterdam-Internet Exchange, AMS-IX. Last year I proposed “Fiber-to-the-Farm” which will connect 20.000 farms in the rural areas of The Netherlands, and “Knowledge Farms” for young entrepreneurs. A few weeks ago I launched the concept of the “Stupid Computer” which surfaced in Germany as “Das Dumme Computer”, meaning that intelligent (office) electronic functions now on PC’s are decentralized to smartphones like the iPhone AND more centralized by broadband to serverfarms elsewhere for hosting and storage. But I have to correct the wrong idea that this trend would only downscale PC’s to smallscreen-lowcost online NetTops and NetBooks. Those are selling very well, but the vacuum which is appearing on the desktop machines can be filled in a number of other, networked, ways.
Last week I introduced in Holland the idea not of a new device/gadget, but of a cluster of gadgets which I call a “Hyperkamer” in Dutch or “HyperRoom”. My intention is that students and teachers get a serious number of tiled flatscreens on a wall in their room at home, a VolksWagen-version of the OptiPuter screens and networks with which scientists are experimenting. These are all controlled by App’s on a smartphone, by pointing at parts of screens for TV, virtual models, games, documents or manipulating images on the screen wall in total. The smartphone can also be used in-house to control all other gadgets and boxes in the room and all electric functions in the smart home as well. In essence, the ultimate single remote device for the complete house. And everyone in the house has got one, to boot.
The name comes from the fact that the present NetGeneration (age 13- 30) is already HyperConnected, intensively using more than four online communication gadgets. The essence of my idea is that students in their HyperRoom can interoperate these gadgets and can learn and cooperate with lecturers and team member students in their room and at multiple locations simultaneously. By manipulating the info on the screens together, they can create economic value, synchronize and synthesise their different contributions and visions for projects and mashups to design assignments, products and new solutions. I have asked the Netherlands government to fund a project (het HAN Hyperhuis Project) to let my smart multi-talented students at the HAN University in Arnhem near Amsterdam define and design such a multi-user networked virtual creative class environment for energy efficient use in their own rooms at home. I can imagine that Apple and Google might help fund this project too. Maybe this is the metaphorical Car of the Future? It is not hard to imagine that the Oval Office will be a cool and well connected HyperRoom soon, too. A room with a view indeed. Why does this professor do this dreaming ? It is the least we can do to help Steve Jobs stay connected while recuperating and…… I want one myself, don’t you?!
See also: Digital Media – Home Media Centres & Home Networks
Tagged in: Global
