Ken's Blog

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.

I am writing this from a coffee shop. There is something deeply satisfying about getting work done in a coffee shop.

You are surrounded on all sides by strangers. There is a general buzz of people enjoying themselves, chatting away, bonding with each other. Yet nobody bothers you or interrupts your work.

The entire experience is very stimulating. Every once in a while you might hear, with one ear, a snipped of conversation from another table. And that might spark ideas and get your own mind flowing in new directions, like the grain of sand that starts the pearl growing.

Also, they have coffee. Let’s not forget about the coffee.

I wonder whether we could re-create this experience using future mixed reality technologies. How long might it be before a virtual coffee shop becomes a place that people really want to hang out?

There would also need to be coffee. Definitely coffee.

Our experience of time is non-linear. Sometimes hours can race by like minutes, while other times a minute can seem like an hour.

I wonder whether anyone has done a systematic study of what happens inside the human brain to create the illusion that time is going faster or slower. Are there measurable processes in the brain that correspond to these temporal illusions?

If anybody knows of such studies, I would love to find out!

When I create software prototypes, one of the big power-ups is the fact that I don’t need to address the general case. All I need to do at first is to show that what I am doing works for *some* cases.

Most people who understand what is going on will be able to see how things generalize. Meanwhile, I am avoiding doing a lot of unnecessary work.

This is important because a prototype is essentially an assertion that “it would be interesting to do something like this.” It’s not really a product, and it doesn’t really yet have user.

In fact, it’s kind of a way of fishing for potential users. In that sense, a prototype is essentially an advertisement.

If the prototype needed to be fully functional, and work for all cases, it might take ten times as long to implement. And at the end of that time, people might still say “nope, don’t need it.”

So it’s very important when creating a prototype to choose the right narrow set of cases that prove your point. Anything more, given the purpose of your prototype, would actually be counterproductive, and frankly a waste of time.

I’ve been thinking about the July 4th fireworks that many of us experienced the other day. Over the course of several hours, millions of people across the U.S. were setting off controlled explosions, usually with spectacularly loud results.

This yearly ritual is, in essence, an enormously large scale audience participation event. And there is something crazy about the entire enterprise, which I think is a large part of its appeal.

On that day of the year, people all across the country are literally playing with fire. As an activity it is more than a little dangerous, and in a moment things can go very wrong.

So why do so many people do it? Maybe it’s a reaction to the fact that we spend so much of our lives watching canned entertainment from a safe distance.

Perhaps on a deep level this is a chance for people to feel something beyond the usual safe and packaged experiences on offer. In some primal way, setting off July 4th fireworks fills a need that for most of the year people don’t even realize they have.