Group 5 // SSES Course Trendspotting & Future Thinking September&October, 2008

Monday, October 13, 2008

Incorporating Virtual Reality In Time-Oriented Train Travel

Despite the fact that we're so close to our presentation on the 16th, we keep the no holds-barred passion for our great interest on the subject of "the future of trains". In this regard, I would like to point to a couple of ideas I have stumbled upon recently.

The first one is from a documentary called "Zeitgeist: Addendum". A very big part of this documentary was dedicated to ideas about building a better future. Of course, transportation had its place in this part, and below is a short videoclip from that documentary, which talks about future possibilities in train transport.



What we see in this video is amazingly similar to the ideas we have been discussing in our group. It provides information about the technological infrastructure that is available even today, but just not in common use. Things like these require a paradigm shift, in the sense of re-evaluating the systems that we have been sticking with up to now, abandoning the ones that do not work well enough to meet our expectations, and finally replacing them with the ones that will enable a much more positive future. Simple as that.

Rolf Hughes, our professor in the department of Interdisciplinary Studies at Konstfack, told us today about the recent research projects carried out at KTH. He was talking about a simultaneous online music-making experience. This was accomplished using fiber optic cables, linking musicians in Sweden to their counterparts in the United States. This idea reminded me of what Mark Smith had told us a few days ago, saying in the future, virtual reality will enable people to choose their own personal experiences during the course of their physical travel. Given the sophistication of virtual reality even today, all these ideas get even easier to conceive of. To link all these again to transportation, it will not be an issue to figure out how one gets from 'point A' to 'point B' and what environmental effects they will be exposed to. "One thing that might still be of concern will be time", Mark Smith said as he agreed with us.

After this inspirational last-minute input, I am looking even more forward to Thursday's presentation!

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