Ken’s Blog

Today some of us visited Unity 3D headquarters. We showed them our CAVE shared-VR storytelling experience. They really liked it, which made us very happy.

After all, we use their software in most of our research, and they are an industry standard. We definitely want to collaborate with them, and today was a very good step toward making that happen.

Yet one must always be cognizant of the cultural differences between research and industry. As we were packing up to leave, I spotted something which highlighted that difference for me.

I called over my colleagues and pointed it out to them. “This,” I said, “shows that these people take their production deadlines a lot more seriously than we take ours.”

I was pointing out a perk available to all employees at Unity, and definitely not available in our lab at NYU: Shower stalls.

Showers seem like a nice perk for employees, but the big winner is the company. When you really need to make that deadline, you can just work around the clock, without ever needing to go home at all.

These people are clearly serious about deadlines.

I was talking to my class today about possible future scenarios for wearables, and the question came up about what people will do with their hands.

As cool as it looks, the whole Tom Cruise in Minority Report scenario doesn’t seem plausible. Most people get tired after holding their arms up in the air for even a little while.

One question that came up was whether we would be holding something. People these days are used to holding a SmartPhone, which they use as both an input and an output device.

But what happens if you already have a perfectly good output device — those cyber-glasses perched on your nose. Do you still want to hold a phone in your hand?

Very likely, we concluded, because a device in your hand will still be useful for input. After all, our hands are wondrously dextrous, and extremely well suited for manipulating tools.

So why not, as we march resolutely into that brave new mixed reality future, give our hands some new tools to manipulate?

I love the sheer variety of ideas that are coming out of our Future Reality Lab these days. Every day somebody else blogs about whatever idea or project is near and dear to his or her heart.

Today it was my turn, and I found it deeply inspiring to be writing in the midst of such amazing intellectual company. But why take my word for it? You can check it out for yourself.

I am one of those weirdly old fashioned people who buys books. Not a few books — lots of books. I even read them.

The downside to this is that books tend to pile up in my apartment. I have far more books than bookshelf space.

I even have LPs and CDs — lots of LPs and CDs. Like I said, I’m old fashioned.

Needless to say, the LPs and CDs pile up right alongside the books. So I decided to do something about it.

Below is what my Sunday project looked like this morning. Just two neatly stacked boxes, containing the promise of organizational bliss.

By early afternoon those tidy packages had been replaced by something a lot messier, as I gradually worked my way through the instructions.

But by this evening, I was the proud possessor of a six foot wide, eight foot high organizational shelf, with two shelves for CDs, lots of room for LPs, and all the extra shelf space I need to show my books some respect. Plus a space underneath for clothes bins and more space up on top for knick knacks.

Before getting on with the business of organizing stuff, I am taking a day simply to admire my shiny new shelving. I just love the sheer potentialness of it.

Last month I wrote a short SciFi story on this blog, as a tribute to Mary Shelley’s seminal 1818 masterpiece Frankenstein — arguably the first science fiction story. I tried to stay close to the literary conventions of Regency Era prose, while touching upon various science fiction themes from throughout these last 200 years.

Over the course of that process, I got to thinking about the nature of science fiction. Any SciFi story needs to incorporate science, but aside from that common premise, we see vast differences within the field.

The science fiction of any given era in history reflects the cultural preoccupations — the hopes and fears, if you will — of that era. Science fiction evolves as culture evolves.

I’m thinking it would be interesting to pick a different era in history — say, the 1950s — and construct a new science fiction story around the cultural preoccupations of that particular day and age. By taking us back to the mindset of an earlier era, such a story would itself be a kind of time machine.

And what could be more appropriate than that?

I was talking with a friend today who was sharing with me his thoughts about career plans. He explained that he no longer felt satisfied with what he had been doing professionally for years.

It was a familiar tale. He had been doing the same sort of thing year after year, working with the same sort of people each time. He was now quite good at it, and his skills were much in demand.

But he told me that he no longer enjoyed his work as much has he had before, and he was thinking of making a change. So I shared with him a bit of wisdom.

It was something my dad had told me back when I was a teenager: “If you’re no longer learning anything in your job, then you are in the wrong job.”

At this point in the conversation a woman at the next table jumped into our conversation. “I overheard what you just said,” she told us excitedly, “and that was really great advice.”

“Yes,” I nodded proudly, “my father was a very wise man.”

Tonight I spent my evening in the company of three very interesting people. One represented the Walt Disney Company, another represented Verizon, and another was a reporter for the New York Times.

The conversation was fascinating, wide-ranging, deep and philosophical, roaming in many unexpected directions. Yet the entire time I was thinking: How can I combine the energies of Disney, Verizon, and the New York Times?

On the one hand you have content, on the other you have distribution, on the third you have our ground truth for reality. Are these mutually compatible? Or, when combined, do they create a fundamental contradiction, a rift in the fabric of reality itself?

In the end I decided that they were just really cool people to hang out with, and whatever happened would happen.

If ever I create a synthesis between these three powerful yet complementary forces, and find a way to bring them out into the world together, you will be the first to know.

A good friend of mine is generally unable to talk about a certain resident of the White House without becoming completely enraged.

This friend of mine is usually a very pleasant fellow. He is extremely intelligent and very well read, and the two us can happily spend hours speaking about many cultural topics of mutual interest.

But when the conversation turns to you-know-who, my friend loses all composure, and becomes utterly irate. Engaging with him on the subject is like waving a red cape in front of an angry bull.

The irony here is that I pretty much agree with my friend, in political terms. The difference is that I don’t allow myself to become emotionally overcome, no matter how distasteful I find this particular topic.

I think my refusal to rage and fume is itself a political act. In my view we currently have a troll in the White House, one who thrives by finding ways to reduce his critics to sputtering outrage. Declining to play along is part of my strategy of opposition.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to work for everyone. I think that my friend, like a lot of other people these days, is showing symptoms of *-aholism. Feel free to replace the “*” in the previous sentence by whatever creepy political figure springs to mind.

For now the two of us have agreed simply not to discuss politics. To me that’s just common sense. After all, if you suspect your friend may be an alcoholic, it’s probably a good idea not to invite him out for a beer.

I’ve been happily watching The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Many of my friends and family are watching it as well. At this point I think I would watch anything created by Amy Sherman Palladino.

There is one montage in the first season where the protagonist, a talented yet still budding comedienne, is observing everyday occurrences around her — in restaurants, on the subway, at dinner with her parents — and using those moments as seeds for jokes to put into her act.

We see, scene by scene, how she develops each such moment into a joke while performing for various audiences. The first few attempts fall flat, but then she figures out why the moment was funny, and how to turn that nugget of humor into a truly good joke.

It’s thrilling and delightful to see the process of creativity portrayed with such clarity. I also love Palladino’s underlying message about how creativity works.

It’s not all about some brilliant moment of intuition. Nor is it all about plodding away hour after hour. Yes, you need a flash of intuition — then you go to work.

The other day I posted about the exceedingly weird encounter a friend and I recently had with 4DX technology. The entire experience was so absurdly wrong-headed that it would have made a great parody.

As it happens, that parody was already done, about 43 years ago. The sublimely silly 1975 film Kentucky Fried Movie contains a very funny scene eerily similar to our 4DX experience. The difference being that KFM was trying to be funny.

Here, for your viewing pleasure, is the theater scene from Kentucky Fried Movie.