Ken's Blog

There are things you cannot do in real life, at least not yet. For one thing, you can’t draw something in thin air for somebody else to see. You can’t place an audio message in a particular place in a room for somebody else to listen to later.

But soon we will be able to do such things. They will become as normal as SmartPhones are today.

As augmented reality simply becomes reality, a number of fanciful super powers will be taken for granted. Children will simply accept their ability to do such things.

I am curious to know what else will change once we have those sorts of super powers. Will these be things that we can now predict?

Was Google search an inevitable outcome of the Web? Did the introduction of SmartPhones inevitably lead to Twitter, or something equivalent?

What will be the equivalent consequences of ubiquitous universal augmented reality? I guess we might just need to wait and see. 🙂

I enjoyed binging on Upload, created by Greg Daniels, who had previously created The Office. I found it to be a very clever and knowing satire.

In my mind, it was sort of asking the question: What if heaven were run by incompetent humans, all working for a really bad corporation? What results is a hilariously dark (very dark) comedy.

But now I wonder whether Upload is already out of date. I am still reeling from the image of a certain person sanctimoniously holding up a bible in front of a church. Just out of frame, we know that many peaceful protesters were attacked by tear gas to enable that silly photo-op.

Has reality finally surpassed The Office in absurdity? Is there some way we can all get out of this particular reality show?

Whoever is paying looters to subvert peaceful protests in American cities, they are doing a very effective job.

People who go to the protests consistently report that the protests are quite peaceful and respectful, but that doesn’t make for interesting news. What does make for interesting news is violence and disruption.

Some clever people have apparently figured out that if you pay a few people to go in, smash windows and burn down stores, you quickly get the attention of news reporters. That is so much more interesting as TV entertainment than all those boring citizens dutifully wearing their COVID masks and peaceably holding up signs calling for social justice.

It makes me sad to see evil people winning out over good people. It’s like watching the burning of the Reichstag all over again.

And we all know how that turned out.

Let’s suppose that you live in a hot climate. Now let’s also suppose that you spend all of your time indoors, day after day, in Zoom meetings with people who all live in a cold climate.

Will it start to feel to you as though you are living in a cold climate? Will your inner “weather voice” start to adjust to the prevailing social reality?

If so, what does that portend for our future?

Watching the news today, I saw journalists getting beat up, tear-gassed, shot, and just in general terrorized. Sometimes they were being attacked by angry cops, and other times by angry looters.

What struck me more than anything, was the fact that anarchist looters and heavy handed cops, who ostensibly are at opposite ends of the spectrum, have one thing in common: They both have it in for journalists.

All I kept thinking, as I watched on the TV one scene after another of violence against journalists, was this: Disease hates disinfectant.

I used to think that the hustle and bustle of a busy research lab was the best place to get things done. When everyone is rushing about, taking meetings, discussing stuff, it feels as though a lot is happening.

Yet now that I am working from home, I realize that I was all wrong. What really promotes productivity is peace and quiet. To get something done, you need to have a clear and uncluttered space between your ears.

After this pandemic is over, I wonder whether we will all go back to those dysfunctional ways. Will we all once again crowd into spaces together, rush about having meetings and discussing everything endlessly?

Or will remember that the best soil for growing productivity is a sense of peace and quiet? Will we remember that the most valuable real estate of all is that uncluttered space between your ears?

I think we can safely assume that if technology continues to evolve, we will eventually be able to “beam in” to completely immersive shared holographic experiences. In some ways this will change how we communicate. But in other ways it won’t.

One thing I predict will not change is Shakespeare. We have been putting on plays by the Bard for four centuries, throughout radical changes in technology. Yet plays by Shakespeare remain remarkably immune to the ravages of better tech.

I suspect this trend will continue. A great play is great not for reasons of technology, but for deeper reasons that have nothing whatsoever to do with the effects of technological advancement.

It has now been 22 years since Jane Murray wrote her famous book Hamlet on the Holodeck. Many of the invited guest authors of that book predicted radical transformations in the nature of theater, as evolving technology permits us to try ever new things.

My prediction is that the most distinguishing feature of future theater isn’t what will change, but what will not change. When it comes down to it, Hamlet on the Holodeck will just be Hamlet.

If we don’t remember at least this, then we are lost.

I am starting to get used to the idea that we are getting to the point where we can really make whatever world we want and simply walk into it together. It’s the fantasy of the Star Trek Holodeck, except we are really going to be able to do it.

Of course there is always a difference between the fantasy version of a technology and the reality that actually gets developed. Let’s take an example.

In Star Trek, everyone had a communicator. Decades later, everybody has a SmartPhone. Yet there was no sense in the world of Star Trek of the things that actually follow from having such a technology.

In the universe of Star Trek, there was no sense that there were equivalents to Uber or Lyft or Airbnb. There was no Instagram or Twitter or other form of communicator-based social media.

This leads me to think about the coming years, when something akin to the Holodeck will become a normal part of our everyday lives. I suspect that other things will end up happening as well.

We may not be able to predict what those things are, any more than in 2006 we could have predicted Uber or Twitter. But we can be sure that they will be interesting, and that they will have a large impact on our lives.

The drastic change in the way everyone is living now has a not unexpected side-effect: The new needs of people during this pandemic are creating new economic opportunities for those of an entrepreneurial bent.

I am not talking here about frauds, scam artists, people who take advantage of the vulnerable and defenseless. I’m talking about inventive people filling real needs.

There is something slightly off about the situation. Inevitably, some of those who are successful at this will get rich while others are suffering. On the other hand, if what is on offer makes peoples’ lives better, fills a real need, eases suffering in some way, then there is ethical virtue here.

I wonder, what are the ethical rules that should be guiding such initiatives. Are there particular boundaries here that should not be crossed? Or is any commercial offering an absolute good if it helps people who are in a state of suffering?

I suspect this subject has been studied before, in earlier times when calamity has befallen a society. Does anyone know of any analysis from an earlier historical era that we can look to?