Crossing the Uncanny Valley

"[The uncanny valley] was coined in the 1970’s by Masahiro Mori, the Japanese robotics specialist, as he sought to describe the emotional response of humans to robots and other nonhuman entities. He theorized that as a robot became more lifelike, the emotional response of humans became increasingly positive and empathetic — until a certain point at which the robot took on a zombie-like quality, and the human response turned to repulsion. Then, as the robot becomes indistinguishable from a human, the response turns positive again."

A fascinating read in the Times about Contour, which is one of those "why the fuck didn't I think of that goddamn" ideas -- screw using goofy ping pong balls to do motion capture; instead, why don't we use phosphor powder so we can have a resolution of up to 200,000 pixels? A pixel for each particle. Long hair is still a problem (unless it's a movie about, say, Shaolin monks who all have shaved heads).

Also, I love the quote at the end from the digital media consultant referring to other companies that are developing similar technologies as "upstarts" rather than "start-ups". I think I'll use that turn of phrase from now on.