With extent of modern technologies it’s not hard to imagine future where information surrounds people and stuff around them. How would you feel living in the world, where each thing around you is connected to web, where the reality became a mere part of the web?

Can we touch that future right now? Let’s play. Let’s imagine all technologies required are already at out disposal, and all that Digital Ether is coming to real at the moment.

Today, 9th of June 2009 we are starting our game about futures of Digital Ether and Origami Cards. Game will take place until 24th of June.

We invite you to join and play with us.

Join our game!

Some additional information will help you to prepare for the game

• Step-by-step instruction on “how to play”
• Game rules and principles
• Stages of the game
• Different kinds of game-cards

Internet - as we understand it today - consists of a quantity of websites which are separated in space. Like moving between countries you can move from one website to another and find another world with its own design, content, and rules. However borders between different websites are diffusing due to OpenStack protocols spreading (and other DataPortability initiatives spreading). Soon internet will become seamless world thanks to “widgets” and “gadgets”. But one border is still quite strong.

This border is a monitor screen which divides our life on “real” and “internets”. A lot of people live a big part of their lives in the Web. They communicate, share their most important things over the Web, and even find such things there (for instance, due to “Facebook” or “Twitter”).

Let’s imagine future without this border. Information about people and things surrounds them at the very same place where people and things are, it covers them and is available at any time. Welcome to the future of ubiquitous computing and omnipresent information.

Welcom to the kingdom of Digital Ether.

Let’s imagine next generation of electronic paper. It is connected to internet and has a touch-sensitive surface to interact with its owner. It is something like i-phone but thinner, lighter, and cheaper.

Why would it be possible? Firstly, in ubiquitous internet world you won’t need any GSM-module. Secondly (because of the same reason) you won’t need memory device and high-speed processor. Finally, you won’t need heavy battery.

So “sticks-from-the-future” devices will be pieces of electronic paper — let’s call them “Origami cards” — which are by the way almost as cheap as a usual paper. So people will be able to have a lot of cards, share them with others, easily throw out old and buy new ones.

Origami card will become not individual device but universal mediator between a man and information, between different people. Origami cards will become doors in the Digital Ether.

Let’s see more technical details about Origami.

In the past the ‘future’ of people, and of the world around them were pretty much certain. Tomorrow was not much different from today. Our grandparents and even our parents planned ‘bright futures’ for us, their kids… while being fully confident that these futures will be just about the same as today, may be a bit better.

We now understand that “the future is not what it used to be”. Future is always different than what we think, and always different in different way. But we also understand that it does not fell on heads from the sky. We make the future. Or the futures, rather. We craft them, weave, design — today.

Wiki-future is a project where we create our futures together, in an ongoing collaboration with each other. Together we try to recognize the weak signals of the coming times, make sense of the new manifestations, and get insights into possible realities of the future.

But we also try to bring these elements of the future into the world of today. We try to fertilise our current thinking, to plant these ’seeds of the future’ into our today’s thoughts and help them grow.

Soon you will see here the first artifacts from the future — objects, concepts and ideas, somewhat familiar to you already, and somewhat amanzingly different and unexpected. They are all aimed at helping us build our bridges into the future.

Want to join, to make and to become a part of the future? You are welcome!

Decide for yourself if you want to just to touch the future for a second, or invest a lot of your energy and efforts (but then also gain a lot in return).

Please register and we will send you an invitation to join our games with the wiki-futures!