cyberpunk2020.de

Blade Runner Umbrella

Remember the kewl “glowing” umbrellas in Blade Runner? As I already wrote here in my blog, these are available NOW! from a company called Euroschirm.

Unfortunately, the umbrella isn’t shown or listed on their website, but as my readers began to suggest that this ad may be a fake I hunted down another address where YES you CAN order it directly, thanks to the guys at ThinkGeek.com. Here’s the link, and it costs 25$.

Meanwhile, I have found even weirder futuristic umbrella concepts – stuff that the makers of Blade Runner could never even have imagined …

(There’s also a variant to this theme: The Starlight Umbrella uses optic fibres to simulate a glimmering starfield above your head – with changing lights!)

RFID umbrella

Take the RFID umbrella, for instance. What’s that? Basically, it’s a “free to use” umbrella you can just take away and use in case you need it. The RFID chip will monitor your movement (and make sure you don’t steal the umbrella). The Corp that came up with this idea is named “Dutch Umbrella”, and apparently it was a barkeeper who had the original idea. The tech is there and the umbrella seems to be in use already. Click here for a German article from the Stern magazine.

Satellite Link Umbrella

But wait! There’s more! Americans AND Japanese engineers both had the idea to connect an umbrella with a weather forecasting service. While the American umbrella will display weather warnings and such by use of a small LED display, the Japanese umbrella uses the umbrella surface itself as a large projection surface, transforming the umbrella’s underside into a large computer monitor you can also use as a GPS screen or for video conference or whatever.

The main advantage of the US version is that it can already be ordered at – guess where – ThinkGeek.com. Here’s the direct link.

Here’s the website of the JAPANESE umbrella, and here is an (older) video of the umbrella’s 3rd gen prototype test:

[youtube mpHJBWUcpXM]

In case the video won’t play, try this link.

This Article on DMNews.com makes some educated guesses about changes to be expected for the year 2020. As might be expected, the picture the article paints is rather grim, even though the predictions are not made by a conspiracy theorist or neo-luddite, but a marketing man.

Here are some excerpts “for immediate use” with your Cyberpunk 2020, CyberGeneration and esp. Cyb3rpunk campaign:

The ARCH Blog informs us about a projekt in a british secondary school where pupils have RFID chips in their uniform that transmits rather sensitive data:

The chip connects with teachers’ computers to show a photograph of the pupil, data about academic performance and whether he or she is in the correct classroom.

Well, next time you start your Cyberpunk 2020 game with the PCs flipping burgers somewhere, you know how to make them rebel… why wouldn’t they be chipped, too?

“Mr. Anderson, we noticed that your average toilet time is 0.4% higher then the average for male employees. This reduces your productivity and costs the company a lot of money. See to it that you come to terms with this problem!”

Its stunning what you would be able to learn about the person chipped.

With this amount of spying, its easy to rationalise why someone would feel punk enough to grab a gun and become an outlaw…