Notes Design

Is Prototyping finally entering the pop-cultural lexicon?

Where it was once an opaque techno-fabulous term used by Q in James Bond flicks, or forming the dubious core of a Star Trek episode, we've now got a word that actually has meaning for the average TV viewer. "Prototyping" arouses interest and fascination, but lately it's also started feeling accessible, like a sexier version of building a birdhouse in the garage with your dad.

Case in point: in addition to reality TV phenomena like Project Runway, Mythbusters and Junkyard Wars, all of which feature on-the-fly construction as part of the drama, we can now count Discovery Channel's Prototype This, which not only uses the term in its name, but invites viewers to submit ideas of their own. This is a marked break from the established depictions of hi-tech: people pay attention when Apple rolls out a new product, but Steve Jobs never asks viewers to suggest what they ought to be working on next.

Now it looks like Prototyping may have its greatest advocate yet, in the form of recent Carnegie Mellon grad Johnny Chung Lee, whose YouTube video explaining how to hack a Wiimote into a VR display has earned him a TED talk, a pile of job offers, and over six million views. If you haven't seen it yet, you pretty much have to stop whatever you're doing and watch it right now: