Visionary Computing
Visionary Computing (VC) is the practice of envisioning and building the future, using technology available right now. As pieces of the technology advance, we get “upgraded” versions of the software or system we are trying to build - and we go closer to the vision.
My study in (VC) is largely rooted in my practice of expressive computing, beginning in rich internet apps, early innovative HCI (demoscene, before the term creative technology was a thing), quantum computing then virtual worlds then augmented reality then extended reality then generative AI 3D, and now the set includes using all of them together - liberally and expressively.
timeline of indie for life (thus far)
- 2025
- ai3d.dev and beyond
- xprize quantum
- 2024
- 2023
- MIT AI Conference Best Business Pitch - Napkinmatic 3D
- SIGGRAPH Real-Time Live Napkinmatic 3D
- WoodstockAI - Napkinmatic
- 2022 Arithmagical. Me, as part of a SIGGRAPH jury with Inigo Quilez?!
- i created Universe Planner, which utilizes the solar system and planets and cities as paradigms for planning won a big prize
- i created earrings.ai shortly after i realized stable diffusion could run on my m1 max!
- 2021 i created a few metaverses, including Worldmatica
- 2020 Back in SF. PaperMATA where sims-inspired AI people live on postcard AR worlds (and diorama.space) - and DrawmaticAR - which turns what kids write on real paper into 3D AR animated scenes - wins SIGGRAPH Real-Time Live Audience Choice Award
- 2019 Newport Beach chill. PlayGAMI and explorations in the lost and dying art in HCI of paper and augmented reality (SLAM was everywhere)
- 2018 Research and Implementation of extensive real and virtualizations of Augmented Reality Interfaces for the Internet of Things. TechCrunch Disrupt Grand Prize for the second time
- 2017 all kinds of face tracking apps
- 2016 HoloLens and HoloShatter and TechCrunch Disrupt Grand Prize for the first time
- 2015 PlatoAR and Wanderlust.mobi - i submit very last minute to a new indie-friendly track at siggraph
- 2014 green gulch zen center for the first time.
- 2013 i tried moving to NYC for a spell. it didn’t work out. we won grand prize at PayPal BattleHack NYC, and made it to the finals, where we got to pitch then PayPal CEO a version of PayPal that included (what we believed easy+accessible) 3D customization for each PayPal product. his only response was, “but isn’t 3D hard?”
- 2012 i officially shut down SL Shakespeare and quit Second Life cold turkey. i re-routed my kinect hacking experience into building a slurry of the first practical Intel Perceptual Computing apps and also win a few first places in their Perceptual Computing Challenge.
- 2011 no longer device-less, i win a bunch of iPads and random android devices from random hackathons. also i build PreviewAR and ProtoAR. legendary fintech hackathon when i came in with building an app I called “Scan to Pay” - where i was told by a panel of venerable VC judges, “while scanning a QR code on your iPhone is impressive, we can’t imagine anyone adopting scanning to pay on a daily basis.” also, salesforce hackathon Social Voxels: foursquare meets Minecraft in AR!
- 2010 back in SF, i start freelancing beyond SL, twilio LAMP fullstack and iOS + Android development and Kinect and Unity and QCAR and beyond!
- I win WIP Muther of All Hackathons with Tap Shake Messenger - sponsored by Immersion haptics sdk - what if you can write a text message silently with your eyes closed using morse code vibrations
- 2009 SLSC renamed the Metaverse Shakespeare Company. Our production of Twelfth Night (where despite being artistic director I had to understudy Viola several times due to global scheduling conflicts), changed my life.
- haikuennui, a stackoverflow-inspired marketplace for haikus
- 2008 i founded and ran the sl shakespeare company, a virtual theatre company in second life (backed by an amalgamation of my more profitable Second Life cottage industry projects: ic-skins and Skin City and also Ina Centaur Architecture and Primtings Museum and HunnyBunny and Ozimals.)
- 2007 i tried writing urban fantasy novels, with mythos and metaphysics blending magic realism and high energy physics. i started a New Yorker fiction-inspired literary journal called sLiterary - Fiction in Second Life
- myfractal.net, a platform that lets you own your own fractal real estate on the mandelbrot set.
- 2006 i dropped out of my triple major in Physics+Philosophy+Bioengineering because i did not feel like myself.
- 2005 i created GREPhysics.NET while forcing myself to study - which inadvertently made me notorious to all physics grad students after.
- 2004
- i took h-index Hirsch’s Condensed Matter Physics course.
- NSF-funded research on quantum repeaters. very boring.
- my first siggraph was so. much. more. fun. than. then-useless-quantum-computing-research.
- 2003 They let me teach a course where I wrote a partial but very irreverent textbook called Slacker’s Guide to Physics: E+M
- Physics 137 @ UC Berkeley made me quantum superstitious.
- 2002 la jolla. they told me it was because of Flash that i did not get into magician school. magic does not exist in the real world. thus, i begin my strange journey as Julia from Lev Grossman’s The Magicians
- the wee years - i survived child abuse and omerta and mafia and wealth to rags poverty and repeated complex PTSD domestic violence (and survived murder several times) and teacher bullying and immigration and gentrification and generational trauma that resonate with Shakespearean drama. i also started a global+award-winning Flash web design company and took all the undergrad math and physics classes at the local college for free. unfortunately, they were just diversions and brief reprieves and not the advertised elusive tickets to freedom.