Sunday, January 18, 2009

Imaginary friends, squared

I’m kind of a fan of Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends, and I’m rewarding myself for a big clean-up this afternoon by indulging in a few episodes. Something’s just occurred to me for the first time as I watch the opening credits. Will we always need writers and animators? With the kind of computing power we have now, and are likely to have as it exponentiates into the future, will it be possible, sometime in a decade or two, to simply set up an artificial word and just watch it? If you can create anything at all, why not a world that behaves by certain set rules, seeded with a few central characters who behave in certain general ways, create a “camera” or first person character though which events are observed, and watch it go? The creators themselves would be as much in the dark as any of the other viewers. These could be cartoons, or quasi-realistic shows, things set in the past, or future, or worlds that never existed. No actors, writers, or directors to pay... pure product, and worlds full of beings who might, in their own way, be as real as you or me... What could be possible?

No comments: