Month: July 2020

I had a very odd conversation yesterday with somebody from Oklahoma. The conversation took a very strange and disturbing turn, and I am still processing.

I am going to need to think about this some more. Maybe tomorrow I will have something to say.

Every once in a while, real life comes by and punches you in the nose to get your attention.

I hate when that happens.

We did a project last year for a narrative experienced in shared VR, which needed a written script. We spent a lot of time working on the script before we did any real production.

As we were doing this, an interesting question came up: Should we treat this like a film script or like a theater script? As you may know, the formatting conventions are very different for a script for a play and a script for a movie. That’s not entirely surprising, since the two media have very different requirements.

On some level, what we are doing is like a movie, because every thing is animated. You are essentially looking at a screen, although the screen is sort of all around you. And there are lots of opportunities for special effects that are possible in a movie but not on stage.

On the other hand, on a formal level, the audience is experiencing something much closer to traditional theater. We have no changes in point of view, no close-ups, none of the use of montage that is central to cinema.

I don’t know whether there is a good answer to this question. Maybe we will just try it different ways for different productions, and see what works better.

Millions of people are at home with their kids these days, during this pandemic. The kids can’t go to school, the parents need to work from home (if they are still employed), and the entire family needs to make do.

A lot of people have been writing about families sheltering at home and their relationship to screens. How much screen time should kids have? What is the line between school and play, the balance between hanging out with friends and roaming the internet?

Does the internet help or hurt? How does it relate to parents and kids sharing quality time together without everyone going crazy?

Suppose we lived in the future world that Vernor Vinge describes in Rainbows End. In the morning everyone pops in their contact lenses, and sees an augmented reality seamlessly integrated with their physical surroundings.

In such a world we might not be talking about screen time. In a sense, there would be no screens, since the real and the virtual would just be seamlessly woven together.

How would this change the dynamic of families sheltering at home? Would it provide a way to promote togetherness, or would it simply create new sorts of barriers between family members?

Somebody asked me today what impact remote instruction has had on my teaching. Obviously there is something lost when you go from an in-person classroom to a group Zoom meeting.

So I found myself thinking about what I’ve been able to do to compensate, to add things to my teaching that I had not been able to easily do in real life. And I found myself talking about creation tools.

When I am sitting by myself in front of my computer screen, I am using all sorts of tools to make things. I’ve got text editors, visualizers, programming environments, 2D and 3D modeling tools and more.

I realize that as I’ve grown in confidence in using Zoom for teaching, I keep bringing in more of these tools. I am able to show students, in a way that would be awkward or impractical in a classroom setting, how I actually make things and conduct my own research.

I don’t think such features will ever replace in-person teaching. But maybe they represent something emergent that is valid and important in its own right.

It will be interesting to see how such approaches to instruction evolve, as necessity forces many teachers to become creative in new and different ways — and as our tools evolve accordingly.

Suppose technology were not the limiting factor. What then would we actually end up with as a “holodeck”?

Would it be like the vision we saw in 1987 in the TV show Star Trek: The Next Generation? Or would it be radically different?

If we could enable anything, will people want to have the sense that their physical being is transported into another world? That very literal vision is both comforting and limiting.

Or might it be more like Ready Player One, where you are transformed into a being with great powers that make sense only in a virtual world?

Or will we split the difference? The Matrix posits a virtual world that seems just like this one, until you unlock the codes that give you super powers.

Or will we gradually abandon this literal body image, and shift to something else entirely? That probably seems like a very strange idea, yet if everyone does it, it will just seem normal.

After all, Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy were represented only by a string of words printed on paper. In 1813 nobody seemed to mind.

I’ve been writing a post a day here since January 1, 2008. Little by little, it all adds up.

This week, out of curiosity, I went back ten years to see what I was saying in this blog a decade ago. Immediately I was swept back into another world, one that is oddly near and distant at the same time.

A decade is an interesting length of time. It’s sufficiently lon g that we’ve gone through many changes, yet we clearly recognize the person we encounter as ourselves.

It’s funny to of myself this way, two versions of me divided by a decade. If the person I am now could give one piece of advice to the person I was ten years ago, I wonder what I would say.

I do understand how it makes folks litiginous
Historical crimes against people indiginous
It’s so very awkward, that this very nation
Was built through a process of extermination
Now there is pushback and now there is rage
It’s the dawn of a far more enlightened new age
They’re toppling statues with vigor and glee
Of Columbus and Wilson and Robert E. Lee
New days are here from Duluth to the Bayou
But what will they do in Columbus Ohio?

Suppose you could take a mood pill that would put you into any mood you want? Would you use it?

I am not talking about intoxicating substances such as alcohol which impair your judgement. I’m suggesting something more down to earth.

Suppose I want to be sober and thoughtful at some point in the day, but lighthearted at another. Or I want to be rueful, or sentimental, or amorous, or coldly analytical.

If something like that existed, and it were truly reliable, I can see how it might be a very good thing or a very bad thing. I just can’t figure out which.

I’m thinking these days of my friends to the north
Where I’m no longer free just to venture on forth
I was sorry to hear that the border is closed
I’m starting to think we are royally hosed

This was such a good country not too long ago
Now it’s all being Trumped by an idiot show
Next thing you know, it’s democracy’s fall
Then Canada says we must pay for the Wall