News

New Generation V 1.0: Business impacts for your company

Written by Rejean Bourgault on Wednesday, 14 December 2011 00:00

In our recent article, "A New Parallel Generation is born: Generation V 1.0", posted on December 11th 2011, we talked about the new Generation V 1.0 that was just born.
After reading it, you are probably wondering, as business people what is the impact of this new Generation to my company.

Very simply, Virtual world is really present with all your young employees, mainly Generation Y and Cyber (30 and less) and even more important very present in the life of your customers and consumers of those generations. It is even more natural for the Cyber generation (16 and less), as they were born with the Internet. Paying attention of the Generation V 1.0 is key for your sales and marketing strategy, and should be part of your long-term planning sessions. Some companies, are already exploring this concept. Take Siri from Apple, which is giving a very unique personality and voice to Apple's latest products, or any virtual mascot being used more and more by companies worldwide.

As the Generation V 1.0 start populating the world we live in and gain popularity, you will need to start integrating them into your holistic marketing approach, similarly as what you have started to do with Social Media. Choosing carefully your Generation V 1.0 ambassador will be key.

The future is exciting !

A New Parallel Generation is born: Generation V 1.0

Written by Rejean Bourgault on Sunday, 11 December 2011 17:00

We are at a turning point, a new Generation is born. Generation V1.0.

Dear 5Deka fans: We are living in a very fast and constant changing world, where some new concept we see now, would never have been accepted by our society 10 years ago. Look at these 2 YouTube video from Japan, where you see the rise of a new generation of singer, her name is Hatsune Miku.

Just forget the technology behind this for a moment, which is a sophisticated computerized animation, just think about the social acceptance, how could this happen ?

This is fascinating. The Virtual is becoming so real, that the audience doesn't make the difference anymore between a real singer and virtual singer. There are many advantage for the industry with this, Hatsune will never be sick, her voice can change as the fans wants it, she can duplicate herself on the stage and sing in a duo, or with as many other singers as you want... She can do a worldwide tour in 20 cities simultaneously, performing live on stage in Tokyo, Sydney, Paris, New York and Toronto all in the same evening... She can change her clothes as often as she want, she can be small, or 10 feet height, she can be bioluminescent, she can fly over the audience, disappear...

Just pause for an instant and think about this concept and how Virtual is now taking a new path with real life experiences, for the general public and people from all generations. A new Generation is now born, in a parallel dimension.

The human currently think in a linear way, and we have been defining the evolution of generations in the same logical way for decades, like Baby Boomers, Gen X, Gen Y (30 years old and less), the Cyber Generation (born with the Internet, ~16 years old or less). Trying to imagine the next one will be quite difficult to predict. We think the next generation, will be ???

5Deka is making a statement today, that we are now seeing the rise of a new generation, created 100% in a parallel path of our human evolution.  We call it: The Generation V 1.0

The "Generation V 1.0" (The First Real 100% Virtual Generation) Attributes:
- 100% Virtual; not Human
- They have a certain resemblance to human
- They can have a significant impact on human's life, as artists, musicians or specialists in a field (think Watson from IBM or Siri from Apple as knowledge specialists)
- They can generate significant amount of revenues for their creator.
- This Generation V 1.0, are built by humans, entirely created by humans and computer.
- They are not biologic; they don't have any Biological resemblance to human species.
- They don't need to eat, drink, breathe.
- They are not Avatars either, as an Avatar is normally a single persons representation in a virtual world.

What will be the evolution of this Generation V 1.0 ? We predict that when Artificial Intelligence becomes full stream, and we enter the Singularity phase, where computer can generate their own intelligence, then we will see the rise of the Generation V 2.0, not before. This could take another 20 to 50 years.

The Future is Exciting !

Technology to the service of athletes

Written by administrator on Sunday, 06 November 2011 23:12

Records in sporting events are being broken on a regular basis. Even if the conditions of the athletes is improving, technology is playing its fair share when it comes to breaking those records. From the improved rubber like material for the 100m track, to the swimsuit mimicking the body of a fish to reduce the drag to shoes giving a little bit more "spring" when needed, technology is taking more and more space in professional (and even amateur) sports. A company called Carré Technologies is specializing itself in that field, offering an "intelligent shirt", which monitors the athlete conditions. This allows the coach and the training team to monitor the athlete's performance and to improve the training based on those details. Another company is offering a bluetooth like headset for swimmers, monitoring body temperature and heart rate, transmitting it by wireless to the coach.

If you compare this to F1 cars, which have been using wireless monitoring technology for many years (transmitting 30meg/sec of data back to the pit during the race), we can see why sporting teams are trying to get an edge by applying this technology to their athletes.

The first steps to Mind reading?

Written by administrator on Sunday, 06 November 2011 22:48

The concept of mind "reading" can represent multiple facets, and we're not talking about knowing with exact details of what the person sitting in front of you is thinking about, but this article in The Economist is giving a very good view of how the field is advancing. With the proper setup, scientist are capable of getting a rough picture of what the test subject is thinking of. This is of course a very rough image in an ideal environment, but this technology is still in its infancy and we can expect it to advance very quickly.

Read the full article here.

Early signs of very intelligent cars

Written by administrator on Sunday, 23 October 2011 14:00

This article describes how automobile makers are working on making their cars more intelligent, not only by improving the control of the car but also by having the car monitor the driver's condition. In this example, Ford is looking at monitoring glucose levels in the driver, generating an alert if the blood sugar levels reach too low of a threshold.

Read it all here.