HTML5 disturbingly close to bringing a tear to my eye

Aw, man. It just got a little dusty in my office at Cooper. Seeing my old childhood home in Leawood, Kansas will do that, especially when the Arcade Fire provides the soundtrack and when Google engineers work with a music video director to create the experience.

The photo above is from an “interactive video” called “The Wilderness Downtown,” and it’s actually as technologically interesting as it is emotionally-provocative. (It’s especially emo if the Google Maps satellite imagery from your home looks appropriately old and nostalgic; see image above). Anyway, it’s referred to as an “experiment” with Google’s Chrome browser, which is probably why, at times, it started to feel like a showcase of whizzy HTML5 elements — windows get launched and shuffled around; you’re asked to scribble on the screen; graphics are animated and layered. I don’t know, maybe I’m just the right mix of cheeseball and geek, but it kind of worked for me.