Meet me at the Holodek Numba 1

HoloDek promises 'movie theater for gamers'
N.H. company aims to roll out high-end facilities
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"HAMPTON, N.H. -- Video games are enticing enough, but a company here is betting that playing the games on high-speed computers with high-definition screens that literally envelop the user can be downright addictive.

HoloDek, which takes its name from the virtual recreational facility aboard TV's Starship Enterprise, has been testing its concept here in Hampton for nearly a year. Company officials say they are about to line up the financing to roll out more than 160 high-end gaming facilities over the next five years in the Northeast. They are also talking with movie theater chains about installing HoloDeks inside existing theaters."

Talk about stealing my ideas :)

Last week I was having another of my typical bouts of insomnia, and I decided to spend my sleepless hours sketching out the potential cash flow for one of my business ideas. My idea (like I've alluded to many times here) was to have a rentable space equipped with a pretty decent home theater setup. After weighing the cost of setting up each room with suitable equipment and calculating the number of hours it would likely be rented, I even priced the hourly rental cost at $5.00!

Of course my idea is to have a space that is available for more general use, but this holodek concept might have a better chance of getting off the ground. The gaming idustry has a nation of rabig of gamers whose imaginations are ripe for the capturing. In my eyes, the holodek is more a modern arcade than it is a "movie theater" for gamers as movie theaters haven't yet adapted to give it's patrons this same degree of freedom of choice (not to mention reasonable value).

Recently, I've been finding while I develop ideas (mostly through this blog) that someone (generally someone who actually has some actual influence and power) comes up with the same thought that I do right around the time that I post it. While this limits my ability to own any intellectual property, I think it encourages my innovative direction.

On that note, I'd also like to make a note of my developing thoughts on "invention". Especially given my recent experience, I don't think innovation should ever be something that is attributed to individual anythings. Innovation is always a combination of circumstance, experience, and attitude. And that's it. The right ideas catch on, not because one person has them, but because a million people have them right around the same time (even though in a practical sense one person has to actually crank out the prototypes). Intellectual property, then, in my mind is a dangerous and artificial fabrication.

Studios, for example, have a tremendous amount of intellectual property via their content libraries, and no one would ever confuse their roles with those of the actual creative forces. However, the notions of Intellectual Property have allowed the studios to leverage their massive financial resources to commandeer a lot of people's creative energy in the name of copyrights. Without actually providing any solutions, just let me say that as a culture, we need to come up with a better way of allowing people to benefit from their creativity and talent, because copyrights don't benefit the creators, they benefit the powerful.

But getting back to the topic at hand, this holodeck idea has the potential to lauch a much larger movement of group focused entertainment venues. It moves the home theaters out of the home and hopefully the people will come with them