I am in New Orleans, back for the first time since 2000. Since before, well, you know.
All I have seen so far is the central area along Canal St. Everything looks shiny and new. In some cases almost eerily new. I am aware, looking at this bustling tourist strip, alive with storefronts and throngs of visitors, that I am seeing something that is a faithful recreation of itself, like a brilliant job of reconstructive surgery undertaken after a terrible accident.
I was told today that outlying areas are not doing nearly so well. The population has dropped to perhaps half of what it once was, and in some places much of the infrastructure for daily living – for simple things like going to the store to get groceries – has not yet come back.
Strangely enough, one of the first conversations I had here today was with a friend who has been working on a “game for the future” – a game predicated on the player navigating through possible futures. Each time the player makes a choice, the set of possible futures changes, to reflect the consequences of that choice. It’s remarkable to have such a conversation less than a day after having talked about “games of the future” on this blog. Maybe it’s just the future having some fun with us.