Project 09: Imagination and Virtual Reality
- Paper number
IAC-07-E5.2.02
- Author
Ms. Päivi Jukola, Helsinki University of Technology, Finland
- Year
2007
- Abstract
Today’s youth are fluent in manipulating content streams to suit their own interest. They are eager to explore on their own and to participate in the virtual world and in the international forums with their self-made interactive audio-video-3D works. Toy-stores supply the young with the most imaginative interactive space gadgets, computer games and picture books. Science-fiction feature films with their highly developed visual effects and animations set the standard and, thus, make plain spacecraft models displayed by national space agencies in space trade shows and exhibits look static, simple and even boring in the eyes of young spectators. The current interest towards human space endeavors is vastly different from the days of lunar landings when tax-payers were content with their passive role to watch others perform and explore. The government and military dominated space sector is only beginning to understand the marketing trends of the 21st century where fulfilling the needs and dreams of the customer are the key to success. Benchmarking with private enterprises Google and Virgin Galactic national space agencies achieve their mission by inviting the public to participate and by empowering also their visions to come true. The discussion of the paper is firstly based on interviews and questionnaires with young French design students and their designs for media pavilions and showrooms, secondly on presentations in the international conferences and in the media. From an outsider’s perspective the international space community spends a lot of time talking to itself. Instead of asking what the customer, the tax-payer, wants, it is still customary for the space agencies to offer limited information and give announcements of decisions that have been made by experts. A vast potential of human innovation and economical success waits behind the barriers of the digital divide. The number of small and medium-size enterprises, artists and designers, women and the youth contributing in scientific and cultural endeavors will increase when access to customized digital rich media is made available to everyone.
- Abstract document