Wireless: AAO

Wireless: AAO (short for Wireless: An Accompanying Overview) is a slideshow for the Information Systems class (CITF 200) that the Dozerfleet founder was enrolled in for the spring semester of 2005 at Lansing Community College. It was written as an accompaniment for a group project, one which wrote a paper as part of a broader class project to study information systems technology, including wireless technology. This was all a part of the Computer Programming major at LCC at that time.

Content
After a very lengthy intro that teases viewers, the opening slide shows a title screen. The title screen quickly dissolves into an intro, where characters from The Strangerhood add flair and personality to every slide. After several words cartwheel in to greet the Information Systems class, Nikki lets everyone know not to panic. Sam goes through the early history of wireless networks, including the introduction of the original 802.11 standard in 1999. The next slide features Wade, talking about 802.11a. This is followed by Chalmers discussing 802.11b. Tovar's slide explains 802.11g. Since the slideshow was made in 2005, there was no knowledge of 802.11n or any later standard. Nikki and Catherine featured in a slide about the benefits of wireless technology. The Garden Gnome features on the very next slide, discussing some of the dangers of it in a slide dubbed "The Dark Side of Wireless' Social Impact."

Catherine follows up in a slide discussing actual events of crimes that had already taken place due to unprotected wireless networks. The next several slides include some predictions that were made in 2005 about where wireless technology would be going:


 * Claim: "We will work from anywhere at any time, unimpeded by the availability or lack thereof of wired technology."
 * What happened as of 2012: The iPad
 * Claim: "We will have a dozen wireless devices attached to our bodies."
 * What happened as of 2012: The iPad and iPhone, but that's about it. Some may substitute the iPad with a Microsoft Surface, Kindle, or Nook.  But there's rarely more than two devices handy at any time.  And most do not plug these devices directly into their bodies.
 * Claim: "We will have devices to tell us when to take medicine, when to schedule an appointment, etc."
 * What happened as of 2012: The iPad, again.
 * Claim: "Text-display glasses will become standard."
 * What happened as of 2012: Only if you live in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and your name is Tony Stark.
 * Claim: "Can anyone say: “1984”? And that’s just the beginning…"
 * What happened as of 2012: Obama supporters monitoring Facebook to make life miserable for Romney supporters. Sites like Tea Party Community and Tumblr arose for those fed up with being harassed on Facebook and Twitter.  Not as spectacularly disastrous as imagined, but still annoying.
 * Claim: "Each house could have its own server."
 * Also:
 * "All major electronics in that house could be connected to the central server."
 * "An administrator can control your entire house from your work office by remote-accessing the server. Nobody gets a snack from the fridge unless the wireless administrator says so, and the administrator makes the rules…"
 * "GUI’s will be replaced with LUI’s; you’ll basically talk to a “Sim,” if you will, that will then manipulate your every appliance according to your command. This “pixel-man” will then fish information for you at your request."
 * "Video conferencing can occur with stuff being done from literally anywhere. Joe African Safari can assist Business Bob in selling out a contract with UPS while swinging vines in the jungle.  Telepathists will no longer be special, nor their concept seem strange."
 * "Your desktop PC could be reduced to a glorified paperweight."
 * What happened as of 2012: Not really.

The second-to-last slide featured Griggs, and was dubbed: "A Ray of Hope." It essentially states that as of 2005, there was a lot of time to go to correct issues with where wireless tech was going, before it got used for the wrong things. As of 2012, abuse of RFID chip technology is a bigger worry than fear of wireless Internet being abused.

Crew
The Dozerfleet founder had the position of slideshow director, as well as being the slideshow producer. Brian Kaplanis got to be the outliner, who provided the basics of where and in what order the slides would be shown. Jeff Ballard and Steve Weicht were in charge of writing the main report that the slideshow was an accompanying overview to. The Dozerfleet founder and Brian got to review the written report, while, Jeff and Steve got to review the slideshow. Jeff also served as the scheduling manager, with the Dozerfleet founder as narrator for the class group.

Slides
The slide backgrounds and intros were made from an image of a transmission tower taken from a Google Image search, each heavily modified in Photoshop. Slide banner titles were designed using an Aqua mimicry not unlike the Aqua mimicry used on this wiki. Sim characters in the piece were taken from clips of The Strangerhood, as the chosen clips seemed to convey the appropriate emotional feel per slide. Most slides were given a blue interface, to correspond with the blue "futurist" look that was popular to associate with wireless technology in 2005. An exception was with the slide dedicated to "the Dark Side of Wireless," in which there was a distinct red tint to everything.

Music
The opening music for Wireless: AAO was “Hymn to the Sea,” Track 15 from the Titanic soundtrack as composed by James Horner. This was to give the slideshow a "mock-epic" quality, since it was opening with all the brazenness of an actual motion picture in spite being a lowly set of slides. This would become an inside joke when it was done a second time for Roffdubbing and Memetic Mutation in Video Communications class in the fall of 2007 at Ferris.

John Williams' “Count Dooku and Finale,” from the soundtrack to Attack of the Clones, which references "The Imperial March," was used for the slide "Dark Side of Wireless."

Since it was handy, the end credits theme from The Ring was used, as composed by Hans Zimmer, for the slideshow's end credits.

Original version
Due to so many possible copyright issues, the original Wireless: AAO joined the many slideshows in inventory that could not be made ready for public consumption. When the slideshow was first drafted in 2005, it was little more than an accompaniment for a written research paper. As such, it was not imagined that a record of it would one day be made available online. While this does not mean it will never be made available to the public, it will not be offered in its original incarnation. Slideshows made for classes at both Lansing Community College and Ferris State University were not drafted with post-class mass public distribution in mind, and so copyright issues were not addressed at those times.

Revised Edition 2012
On November 27th of 2012, however, a significantly-edited version of the slideshow was made available in view-only format. It included a variety of revisions, such as gutting most of the CPU-heavy word animation gimmicks. The lengthy Titanic-like intro was gone. Characters from The Strangerhood were replaced with characters from Ciem. Also, the entire slideshow was reformatted for a 16:9 aspect ratio. Due to issues with the credits not rolling offscreen properly, the end credits were made static. All Cormorant logos were replaced with appropriate Dozerfleet Studios logos. Also gone was all copyrighted music that featured in the original. It did, however, retain all predictions that were in the original, including the discredited ones.