Ken's Blog

Many of you have been there. Your computer program has a bug, which for weeks you have been searching for.

You keep making improvements to your program, adding features, making things prettier. But still that bug persists. And you know you can’t really release the code until you find it.

Then one day, you manage to fix it. The clouds part, sunshine streams in. Somewhere a choir is singing.

Just this morning I fixed such a bug. A terrible, tenacious, head banging scourge of a bug.

But now the bug has been vanquished. It is no more, and I am free.

Until, that is, the next bug shows up.

A huge economic shift is coming. Post-pandemic, things will not go back to the way they were pre-pandemic.

Companies are downsizing their plans for new office construction. The assumption now is that people will spend more of their week working from home.

Commercial property won’t go away, but the home will take on a more prominent role as an integral part of the workplace.

New kinds of services will arise to cater to the growing market that this will create. For example, health and wellness while working in the home will gain in prominence, as millions of new customers show up for that market.

To take just one category of such a market, “aging at home” will start to be tied to the work economy in a fundamental way. Older people will consequently find it easier to enter a newly configured workforce.

These will all be great changes, if they are done properly.

Sometimes life becomes overwhelming. At those times you need to remember that this life is probably only your first time through.

Next time you will most likely do better.

Why do people find flowers beautiful, and why do we like their aroma? If you look at these questions from an evolutionary perspective, it is hard to identify a specific chain of cause and effect.

What would be the evolutionary advantage to flowers for people to find them beautiful and fragrant? Conversely, what would be the evolutionary advantage to our species to perceive flowers in this way?

Unquestionably, we humans love to look at flowers and we love to smell them. We cultivate them, surround ourselves with them, and give them as gifts to the ones we love — entirely because of these qualities that please us so very much.

Is there some non-obvious evolutionary adaptation at work here? Surely somebody must have studied this question before.

If we were to design a space from the ground up to support sports contests for people who are in high quality VR, how do we do that? Are there elements that are essential, and others that are optional?

What kind of tracking equipment do we need? What are the safety considerations?

Is there a fundamental difference between collocated and non-collocated sports contests? Can we consider a mix between the two?

In other words, can we consider the sports equivalent of the Jedi Council? And if so, what are the issues around network latency that need to be considered for non-collocated players?

I suspect there are a lot more things to think about here, and an opportunity to play entirely new varieties of sports. I, for one, am looking forward to playing Quidditch.

I wonder whether virtual pets will really be a thing, as extended reality starts to become pervasive. I think it comes down to the question of whether we would think of an artificially intelligent entity as “alive”.

I don’t mean this in an intellectual sense, but in an emotional sense. There is a kinship that we have with any fellow living creature that possesses an organic brain.

We understand such a creature to be a feeling, thinking being, however different from us. It is not clear that we would ever think the same way about an entity that is simulating a brain via artificial intelligence, however faithful the simulation may appear.

If I had to venture a guess, I would guess that virtual pets will never be a thing in the way that real pets are. In this domain, the difference between real and simulated is simply too primal, and the potential for true emotional bonding hinges upon that difference.

I am visiting a hospital today for a checkup. Unlike most places in July 2021, masks are mandatory for everybody here.

This raises an interesting question: Are hospital safer than other places because we are all wearing masks, or are they less safe because, well, they are hospitals? After all, there are lots of sick people here.

Somebody probably knows the answer to this question. I sure as heck don’t, but I’m very curious to find out.

Some years from now, we may all be wearing XR glasses as we shop, travel, go to restaurant and so forth. Those glasses will take the place of SmartPhones, but they will be far more integrated into our surroundings.

When that happens, I wonder whether we will see the rise of non-physical jewelry. Rings, necklaces, earrings and so forth might start to appear on peoples’ bodies, not physically but virtually.

Unlike physical jewelry, these adornments will be able to change their appearance over time, perhaps to match our mood or the current social situation. They will also have value, but in a way that differs from physical jewelry.

The uniqueness and rarity of a particular piece will be established by digital means. Blockchain or an equivalent technology will ensure the provenance of that rare necklace you are virtually sporting.

I wonder what skills will carry over from traditional jewelry making, and what new skills will be developed. I guess only time will tell.

Suppose technology actually gets to the point where we have access to the equivalent of Google through a direct brain/computer interface. What would be the impact?

In particular, how much better would we be able to function given such a capability? Would the resulting change be fundamental or just incremental?

I suspect it might not make a large difference to most people reading this, since our fundamental way of thinking is already pretty set. But it might produce a radical change in children born after everybody has that capability.

They would think about connections between things in ways we might not be able to imagine. With the knowledge in the world just a thought away, they might approach problem solving very differently than we do.

Eventually, everybody will be born into a world where encyclopedic knowledge is simply normal. I wonder whether it would be possible for us to make some reasonable predictions about what that world might be like.

I just saw the new Black Widow movie, and really liked it. But one moment jumped out at me in particular and got me wondering.

It was a moment that was a direct cinematic quote of Cronenberg’s 1986 version of The Fly. I won’t tell you the details (no spoilers here), but it was one of those moments that establishes that somebody with super powers is problematic, and dark, and morally compromised.

Which is pretty much the same purpose that it served in The Fly. And in both movies, the scene was very effective.

So, was this a loving quote/homage, or was it cinematic theft? How can you tell the difference between the two?

Is there even a difference? Maybe it comes down to audience expectations.

If the audience understands it to be a loving homage — as in the post-credit nod in Deadpool to Ferris Beuller’s Day Off — then it’s a legit cinematic quote. Otherwise, it’s theft.

The problem is that there is no easy way to know what an audience is expected to know. How many people in the audience with me realized, in the moment, that they were essentially witnessing a re-enactment of a great movie scene from 1986?

I have no idea.