Video Games became much more than games

When the Kinect was introduced it was clear that was much more than just video-game.
The early adopters of the Kinect were not content just to play games with it.
The object synthesizes an arsenal of sophisticated components: a fancy video camera, a “depth sensor” to capture visual data in three dimensions and a multiarray microphone capable of a similar trick with audio.
Combined with a powerful microchip and software, these capabilities could be put to uses unrelated to the Xbox.
Like: enabling a small drone to “see” its surroundings and avoid obstacles; rigging up a 3-D scanner to create small reproductions of most any object (or person); directing the music of a computerized orchestra with conductorlike gestures; remotely controlling a robot to brush a cat’s fur.
Microsoft’s chief executive announced that the company would release a version specifically meant for use outside the Xbox context to indicate that the company would lay down formal rules permitting commercial uses for the device.
Does progress flow from a corporate entity’s offering a whiz-bang breakthrough embraced by the masses?
Or does techno-thing success now depend on the company’s acquiescing to the crowd’s input? Which vision of an object’s meaning wins?
The Kinect does not neatly conform to either theory.
But in this instance, maybe it’s not about whose vision wins; maybe it’s about the contest.


Liberally taken from Dewayne Hendricks