Ken's Blog

Will our relationship with words become fundamentally different when we are all able to see them floating in the air between us? AI and XR glasses will help us visualize and organize even our casual conversations, if that is what we want.

At that point the relationship between words and objects might change, because we will be able to see and add visual labels to the things around us. That is something we will do without needing to give it even a moment’s thought.

Acts of visualization which now require preparation and staging, will take on some of the qualities of spoken language. Creating visual representations of your ideas can then be fluid, immediate, in the moment.

Children will grow up in a world thus transformed. Will their idea of language be different from ours in some fundamental way?

Today I tried to implement a sophisticated and elaborate method of sending data back and forth efficiently between my computer and my XR headset. I was very proud of it, and spent a few hours fine-tuning it.

To my disappointment, I couldn’t quite get it to work properly. There were always artifacts in the data. Try as I might, I wasn’t able to track them down.

So I just tossed the whole thing out, and spent just a few minutes implementing something much simpler and less sophisticated. The simple approach worked like a charm, and I’m going to keep using it.

There is a lesson here.

I was having a conversation with a friend today about the intricate relationship with two dimensional and three dimensional things in our daily life. We seem to spend much of our time transitioning between these two modes of reality.

We walk through three dimensional rooms to our TV or computer, where we then interact with a 2D view of whatever we are interested in. But often the content on those screens represents something three dimensional, a 3D world much like the one we just walked through.

Yet in that screen-bound 3D world we see people reading books, looking through papers, watching screens, and otherwise focusing their attention on 2D things. And so it goes, an infinite succession of nesting dolls.

I guess this all makes sense. We inhabit these three dimensional bodies, and yet all we see with our eyes at any moment is essentially a 2D view of the world. So of course we intertwine these two types of realities on such a fundamental level that we hardly even notice that we are doing it.

Today I am very proud of my alma mater, Harvard University. In the face of inappropriate threats and bullying by this rogue administration, Harvard has stood up for academic freedom, and has blocked the encroaching forces of authoritarianism.

Our American flag stands for many things. But at our best, one of those things is the right to engage in free intellectual and academic debate, without the long arm of the government dictating the limits of that debate.

That is the only way in which we can educate each new generation of young people to be capable of working through the difficult choices that we always face as a highly diverse democratic nation.

If academic discussion is hobbled by the dictates of a political order, then freedom is replaced by fear. And this administration has made it very clear what can happen to young scholars whose opinions it disagrees with.

Harvard is being brave in standing up for patriotism, for the U.S. Constitution, and for our collective right to engage in free debate in a democratic society. Let us hope that they prevail against those who are currently working to destroy our nation from within.

People say a lot of negative things about family. And at times I see their point.

But at the end of the day, as imperfect as it is, there is nothing else like family. And that is a wonderful and precious thing.

In a wide ranging interview, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was asked why certain books were banned from the Nimitz Naval Academy library, but not others.

“What was the reasoning behind banning May Angelou’s award winning autobiography?”

Hegseth explained that the book was deeply racist. Angelou falsely claims that when she was a child, she was treated differently from other children because of an imaginary concept of “race”, a concept which the current administration has pointed out does not actually exist. “As you know, we treat all children equally in this great country, and we always have,” Hegseth said. “We need to make sure that our military officers in training are never exposed to fictional statements to the contrary.”

“Have you read the book in question?”

“Of course not. In order to do this job, I need to keep my mind pure.”

When asked why “Mein Kampf” by Adolph Hitler was still in the library after the purge, Hegseth grew more positive.

“I’m glad you asked me that. As you know, fighting antisemitism, by any means necessary, is a high priority for this administration. And the simplest way to eliminate antisemitism is to eliminate Jews. That’s how you cut through the red tape. No Jews, no antisemitism. In his own way, the former chancellor of Germany was quite the political genius. In fact, we find that book to be so inspirational that we keep two copies in the Nimitz library.”

Unfortunately, just at that moment the interview was cut short, as the interviewer rushed out of the room, claiming to be suffering from a sudden stomach ailment.

I’ve been thinking more about this thought that I had, posted the other day. What if it was Elon Musk whom our government had summarily deported to a prison hellhole in El Salvador without due process, due to an “administrative error”, rather than Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia?

Perhaps poor Elon would keep a daily diary. He might do this both to maintain his sanity and to distract himself from whatever daily tortures were being meted out by his Salvadorian guards.

Rubbing his now bald head (all prisoners are shaved when they first enter the prison), Elon might wish to put pen to paper to record his daily thoughts.

Of course it is not clear how he could obtain either pen or paper. Being an enterprising individual, he might provide his guards with sexual favors in return for basic writing materials.

Perhaps Mr. Musk will hear the encouraging news that the U.S. Supreme Court has told the U.S. government to “facilitate and effectuate” his return. Alas, he might also notice the ambiguous wording of that ruling.

Any attempt to bring Elon Musk back to the U.S., according to the SCOTUS decision, should be done “with due regard for the deference owed to the executive branch in the condust of foreign affairs.” In other words, Elon might be stuck in that hellhole in El Salvador for a very long time.

Meanwhile, he may write in his diary about fun activities that he is organizing for his fellow prisoners. Perhaps he is taking the initiative to introduce them to the wonders of National Socialism. Maybe, with his encouragement, they can organize their very own volksgemeinschaft.

I guess we won’t know for sure until we read those diaries. Which, according to what we understand so far of the administration’s response to the Supreme Court decision, might not happen for a very long time.

Today the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the administration to return Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia from that hellish prison in El Salvador. To me this was the single most hopeful piece of news that has come down the pike in quite a while.

Thomas Jefferson pointed out that the writ of habeas corpus is one of the fundamental guarantees of human rights necessary for a free society. If a government can simply be disappear an individual from society with no due process, then freedom is illusory.

In particular, if Garcia can be permanently disappeared into an El Salvadorian hellhole due to an “administrative error”, with the explanation that the U.S. has no jurisdiction to extract him, then you and I can also be permanently disappeared. The exact same legal justification would apply.

So the line in the sand that was drawn today by SCOTUS was a crucial one. You and I, and the entire population of the U.S., just dodged a very large and dangerous bullet.

Today is Tom Lehrer’s birthday. The great man, who is still with us, turns 97 today.

In honor of his birthday I read the Wikipedia article about him. Which is where I learned that he has made all of his recordings freely available, and you can download them all from his website.

So I downloaded them all from his website. And of course I immediately proceeded to listen to The Elements, which made me very, very happy.

Lehrer once famously said “Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel peace prize.” I wonder what he must think of the current state of our Union.

I have the NY Times app on my phone. Every time I pick up my phone, I see an alert that says “Breaking news…”

These days I am afraid to click on the link. With each new day, the “breaking news” is more horrifying than the day before.

The bad news is that this administration seems to be hellbent on utterly destroying everything that was good about the United States. In the process, they seem to be trying to also destroy the highly interconnected economy of the entire world.

The good news is that it doesn’t look as though they will succeed in destroying the world’s economy — this debacle is shaping up to be our very own version of Brexit. When this all shakes out, the other nations of the world will just work around us and continue trading with each other.

Alas, the phrase “breaking news” seems to be particularly apt these days. Unfortunately, it is our nation’s economy that is being broken.