Ken's Blog

Since I am in Detroit today for the UIST conference, I took the opportunity to renew my Global Entry. That’s the thing which lets you cross national borders without needing to stand on long lines at airports.

In particular I signed up for NEXUS, the variation which expedites travel between the U.S. and Canada. To do that, I took an Uber to an address which turned out to be a little mobile office trailer right on the border.

My interview with U.S. Customs was very easy. When it was finished the Customs officer pointed me toward another desk and told me I now needed to do an interview with Canadian Customs.

So I walked the fifteen feet from the U.S. Customs officer’s desk to the Canadian Custom officer’s desk. When I reached that second desk I realized I had just crossed the border.

So I can truthfully say that today I walked all the way to Canada. And I managed to do it without even leaving the room.

Today, at the UIST conference in Detroit, just before my workshop keynote, I asked a colleague whether he thought it was worth telling the audience that my talk would be using procedural graphics that I had built entirely by hand, without the use of any AI.

He gave me a funny look, as if to say “Why would those young people in the audience care about something as odd as that?”

I realize that it was as though I were saying “Hey folks, I walked all the way here from New York.”

The reaction to that would probably have struck the same kind yet condescending tone: “Way to go Ken. Hey, you do you.”

Starting tomorrow I am going to be very busy all week at a conference, which I know will be a whirlwind of activity. Today is the day before the conference — the calm before the storm.

I spent most of the day quietly working on my talk, and enjoying the peace and silence. When we manage to get those rare moments of calm, they are precious and wonderful.

Taking a deep breath now, before heading into the whirlwind.

Today, walking around Greenwich Village and seeing all the happy people wearing costumes, I finally made the connection between Halloween and Election Day. The connection was always there — I just hadn’t seen it before.

Halloween is the last official thing that happens before everybody here goes to vote. Voting, unlike Halloween, is a very serious and grown-up thing.

In Brazil they have just made the collective choice not to vote into office a corrupt authoritarian who seems to want nothing more than to squeeze the joy out of human existence. I am happy for the Brazilians.

This coming Tuesday we Americans have a similar opportunity. We can vote to take power out of the hands of corrupt authoritarians who seem to want nothing more than to squeeze the joy out of human existence. If we manage to do that, I will be happy for us.

Halloween is great fun. But it is useful to remember that there are, after all, real monsters.

Speaking of prototypes, I have an idea for future XR glasses. By “future”, I mean maybe about 10 years from now, when Moore’s Law predicts that computation will be about 100 times faster than it is now.

So we won’t really need to worry as much about things like compute power or the bandwidth and latency of wireless connections. But we will still need to worry about the laws of physics and optics.

I have some ideas about how we can pack all of the optical components into a thin form factor that looks like a lightweight pair of eyeglasses. The only constraint in my approach is that every part of each eyeglass lens needs to be the same distance from the corresponding eye (in other words, it needs to form a section of a sphere).

So I just needed to decide how large to make the eyeglasses. Given that the human eyeball can rotate about 90 degrees horizontally and about 70 degrees vertically, the design pretty much suggested itself. You can see the result HERE.

Sometimes I think something is impossible. Then I build a prototype.

Usually the prototype ends up cheating in some way. It may not do everything I want, and it might cut corners. But having a working prototype helps me to better understand what I really want.

It’s not that the impossible has suddenly become possible. Rather, it often turns out that the “impossible” problem can be successfully tackled if you reframe it in some subtle way.

Essentially, there is often a meaningful connection between the unattainable original goal and a similar solution that is effectively the same, and yet is indeed attainable.

Without building a prototype, I would never discover that attainable solution.

If I flee to Miami and declare myself to be Brazil’s legitimate leader, is that enough for me to become Brazil’s legitimate leader? I am curious about how that works.

To be clear, I haven’t won an election in Brazil, so I couldn’t really use that as evidence to backup my claim.

But apparently, from what I hear, that sort of detail is not necessary these days. Although it seems that fleeing to Miami is a key part of the process.

Also, I hear the weather is nice in Miami this time of year. So that would be a plus.

Now let’s transpose the time, but not the place. In a future New York City, when the AI connection to our eyeglasses or our contact lenses goes out, we will understand that a lot of things will temporarily become unavailable.

We will temporarily not know how to cook a meal, do our morning exercises, find items in stores, pick out furniture, write an email, start a conversation at a party, or do many other things that we normally take for granted.

Judging by current human behavor, what we won’t do is blame ourselves for being dependent upon AI. We will take it for granted that AI is something that should simply always be available, and we will blame the internet for the inconvenience.

Does that sound about right to you (no fair asking Claude or Gemini or ChatGPT)?

In New York City, when the power goes out we understand that a lot of things will temporarily become unavailable. We won’t be able to take the subway, charge our phones and computers, buy a pizza, run our air conditioner, or do many other things that we normally take for granted.

What we don’t do is blame ourselves for being dependent upon electricity. We take it for granted that electricity is something that should simply always be available, and we blame the power company for the inconvenience.

In some ways this makes me think about the future of AI. More tomorrow.

To me one of the ultimate puzzles in life is the motivation for working on puzzles. Case in point: Every day I work on solving a word puzzle that I see in the newspaper.

I spend time working on that puzzle even though I receive no reward other than solving the puzzle. But it gets even stranger than that.

I’ve realized that I work on the daily puzzle precisely because it is a perfectly recreational activity. If someone were to offer to pay me to engage in exactly that same activity every day, I would probably not do it.