Editorials
Can Hip-Hop Bring Touch Computing Mainstream?
Touch computing is still a relatively geeky subject, which is why I was somewhat surprised to see the HP TouchSmart featured in a new Black Eyed Peas video. I’m not sure if this is a paid product placement or not, but it did get me thinking about how influential hip-hop artists are and whether one key to popularizing touch computing is getting the likes of P.Diddy, Jay Z and Will.I.am to rap about touch.
This Black Eyed Peas video starts and ends with a of the HP TouchSmart. Towards the middle of the video, one of the artists interacts with the TouchSmart’s UI. Movies, TV shows and music videos regularly show fictional UI’s, but the tech shown in this video is available today.
You might laugh at the idea of rappers promoting touch computing, but stranger things have happened. A year ago, who would’ve thought that P.Diddy would join Larry King and Ashton Kutcher to talk about how he has 600,000 Twitter followers?
Rodfather
04/20/2009 at 1:02 pm
“You might laugh at the idea of rappers promoting touch computing….”
I don’t see anything funny about it. What’s so funny about it?
Xavier
04/20/2009 at 1:56 pm
Musicians typically don’t promote specific tech products and brands with the same fervor as clothing, cars, etc.
The big proponents of touch typically are more likely to have a Microsoft polo shirt than a record contract.
feralboy
04/20/2009 at 10:55 pm
Times have changed, man. Computers are about as common as toasters these days. Go into your local Best Buy and stand around for a while and look at the myriad of customers purchasing PCs…from grade school to grannies, everyone “needs” a PC today, even if it’s just to surf the net and e-mail. As much as we may hate it, we’re no longer geeks (:
blash
04/21/2009 at 8:33 pm
Oh dear god I need to wash my ears out after hearing that. God that was bad; if they want to advertise touch computing they need to attach it to decent music (hip hop as it may be: google “Subliminal”)
All joking (not that I was) aside, if that’s what you were looking for you’d need a video that makes it clear that the technology is available today. The video keeps repeating stuff like “future” and reinforces a failssumption I heard that was “hey I heard about Tablet PC’s like 7 years ago, but hadn’t heard anymore about them, and never saw them on the shelves, so I thought they were, you know, one of those failed projects.”
@feralboy: You’re a geek if you do anything other than simple documents, email, music, games, and web on your machine. Use Terminal? Geek. Pen tech? Geek. Have a computer that fits in your pocket so you can run a Matrix screensaver anywhere you want? OMG SUPER NERD.