Author: admin

Virtual furniture store

Today I went to a furniture store that was having a “going out of business” sale. Except it wasn’t exactly that.

Rather, the store is going entirely virtual. Consequently, the store owners want to sell off all of the inventory at their remaining bricks-and-mortar outlets.

There is a delicious irony about this development. We are literally talking about the physical objects that form the environment of our actual bodies.

There is nothing more solid and real than the chair we sit upon, or the table at which we eat. Yet we seem to be moving toward a society in which even these things are purchased on-line, as virtual items in our virtual shopping cart.

I wonder how far it will go.

Quest 2

Today I tried out my new Oculus Quest 2. The only important difference I could see between the Quest and the Quest 2 is that the latter has higher resolution.

But that is an incredibly important upgrade. If you want to get serious work done in VR (and I definitely want to get serious work done in VR), then you need to be able to read text.

On the Quest, you could read text, but only if it was in a large font. In that sense, the experience was kind of like working on an old-fashioned low resolution computer monitor.

The Quest 2 has no such problems. Text is gorgeous, clear and easy to read. The change is extremely welcome and extremely satisfying.

Now I’m going to get some serious work done.

Portable rooms

I have been working on building a VR space for a while. I have been doing it at home, so I have gotten used to walking around in the VR room while in my actual physical room.

Today for the first time I brought my VR headset somewhere with me to show the space to somebody else. You could say that it was the first time my virtual room has been outside my physical room.

There was something both disorienting and empowering about the experience. I suddenly realized, on an emotional level, that my VR space could be anywhere in the physical world.

I had known this intellectually, but it hadn’t really hit me on a gut level: A VR room is as portable as a Web page. It exists nowhere in the physical world, yet at the same time everywhere.

For the last quarter century or so we have been living in the age of portable documents. Now we are about to enter the age of portable rooms.

Movable walls

The idea of buildings with movable walls is not new. Reconfigurable spaces have been around in architecture for centuries.

But until now they have been considered a specialty item. The underlying technology is difficult to implement properly, and there are issues around temperature management, airflow, safety and security.

The advent of computers changed the conversation around reconfigurable architecture. Rather than needing to move walls around manually, the users of such spaces could, to some extent, “dial in” their preferences, and a building could then adjust room dimensions accordingly.

Now that many people can walk around in buildings even before they are even built — thanks to newly accessible consumer-level VR technology — I wonder whether we are on the brink of another evolution of reconfigurable architecture. After all, in VR it is quite easy to move walls around, and to get a sense of how that might be of benefit.

Widespread access to such capabilities may lead to thinking of physical interiors in a whole new way. Perhaps, when it becomes the norm to design one’s house in shared VR, movable walls will start to become the norm rather than the exception.

Walt, Frank and Steve

The lives of great geniuses are often very complicated. Genius is an odd phenomenon. It visits people and very uneven amounts and often it very surprising ways.

The life experiences of three geniuses of the 20th century, in very different fields, had remarkably similar arcs. Walt Disney was a pioneer in animation, Frank Sinatra in popular music, and Steve Jobs in personal computers — three very different fields.

Yet the overarching narrative in each case was oddly similar. The early career was an example of a naive and idealistic young person achieving rapid success and recognition. Then there came a time when the young genius was cast out and betrayed, followed by a period of disillusion.

Then, some years later, there was a return to success, but with an important difference. The Disney, Sinatra and Jobs who eventually returned to triumph to build an empire was very different from the original young idealistic genius who had started out.

Each returned as a hardened and ruthless businessman. In each case there was still an appealing populist message, but now both the man and the ethos behind that message had been transformed.

The shared pattern here, once recognized, is remarkably specific. I wonder how many geniuses throughout history have had lives and careers that have followed a similar arc.

Being Mr. Collins

I was having coffee today with friends, and the subject of Pride and Prejudice came up, as it often does. In particular, we were discussing how it would be be easier in real life to be some of Austen’s characters, rather than others.

I pointed out that the most difficult character to be in real life would be Mr. Collins. He is, in a very important way, the most pure of all the characters.

After all, he is the only character in the novel who knows, without a shadow of a doubt, that he is perfectly fine exactly as he is, without the slightest need of improvement.

He is also, of course, by far the most annoying and insufferable character in the book. To understand why, see the previous paragraph.

How can they tell?

Reading our national news of the last few days, it occurs to me that this would be an apt time to rewatch The Madness of King George. It seems to parallel our current situation uncomfortably well.

Although I must admit that my general feeling about the situation of watching a leader go gradually mad was summed up by Dorothy Parker. Upon hearing of the death of former president Calvin Coolidge, her first response was “How can they tell?”