Doom…not *my* future!

Above are screenshots of a fairly new video game called “Doom 3” which has just been released on my preferred home platform, Macintosh. Let’s see if you can follow my cognitive leaps as I traveled the Web from viewing videos and screenshots of Doom 3, thought about the future of gaming, and ended up at a site about a bunch of developers that are building a clock that will run 10,000 years.

I’ve been stunned at the cinematic quality of video games that have come out over the last few years (especially the recent Halo2). Though I’m not a huge gamer, my son is so I have ample opportunity to watch, to play, and to be amazed with the quality level of the hardware and software coupled with the true immersive and movie-like experience within these games.

In my first post about video games (see “Video games and the internet bubble. Is it time for dot com…the sequel?”), I reminisced about the early days of gaming and my personal experience using them. Man…is it ever different today! These thoughts about how far gaming has come led to thinking about the future of virtual immersion experiences (like Halo and even online worlds like There.com) and the impact of it on learning, social interactions and more. I predict that within 3-5 years, video games will be more immersive and a better experience than movies…and bigger revenue generators too.

From there I thought about future predictions and what else was occurring in technology and, especially, in other areas of human existence. The world of 2088 was one of my first stops. Next was a brief history of the apocalypse (pretty depressing). Other visits included one of my favorite authors and futurists Ray Kurzweil; Batelle’s top ten prediction lists; Humanity’s Future; and a fun look at predictions that never happened.

Most of the above sites take fairly negative and gloomy views of the future. In fact, many of the other sites I went to are in that same vein. Then I remembered a show I’d watched some time ago that profiled Stewart Brand and his role in The Long Now Foundation. Their purpose? To build a clock that will run for 10,000 years and a library that will preserve digital media for millenia. The goal? To get the human race to think in 10,000 year increments…the long now. To do so will compel us all to think about what we do now and its impact thousands of years in to the future.