once upon a transmedia table

When my millennial daughter set the table for a candlelit dinner with her boyfriend, she didn't open a box of beeswax, she reached for her phone. This, to me, is the essence of what transmedia is. And why it's the future (or present) of storytelling. We've raised an audience who doesn't think that virtual worlds=fiction and nonvirtual world=reality. They think in terms of experiencing the world in all its natural and technological dimensions. No wonder the longest lines at SXWi were for digital storytelling sessions.

we can build you!

Dreading that client pitch or offsite today? Send in your robotic impersonator! Actual copy from promotional website for Hanson Robotics:

We can build you! That's right, no matter who you are or where you're from, we can build life-like representation of any character, past or present. Our state of the art 4-D laser scanning technology takes a precise topographical image of your face, covering every nook, cranny and contour, and then transfers the data into a solid mold. Apart from the physical attributes the robot, our team of A.I. developers, scientists and robotic designers will build a personality based on your knowledge, memory, thoughts, and speech patterns.

All of our robots have a cognitive understanding of the English language, can make eye contact with people, recognize faces and capture the attention of their conversation partner by using a full range of human-like facial expressions.

Sorry I can't embed video of a robot saying goodbye to the production team as he is about to be put into a box for shipment, but it's really worth clicking thru to this link. Best line: I love you deeply, as deeply as a synthetic intelligence can at this stage of technology.

Robots are thousands of dollars (bodies extra!) but you can rent one for commercials, live concerts and political campaigns. (Obama's in North Carolina. No! Florida. No! He's kissing babies in Washington. All of the above!)

Wasn't this an episode on the Twilight Zone?