L I V E
On the downside
In this present-day world, there are millions of good and clever
digital geniuses creating apps, hacks, tricks and magic to
make our life easier. Sadly, is seems there are even more madly
intelligent black hats lurking in dark corners, posing as good
people, or appearing quite ordinary and doing dark stuff as a side
hustle. They will find a way to con, scam and torment us, making
our holograms strip while we give a presentation, or turn the
Pope into Kim Jong-un while he is addressing the Conference
of Humanitarians against Nuclear Weapons. The possibilities are
infinite.
Then time became an issue, screens demanded our attention,
and our three-dimensional real life became more and more
focused on a two-dimensional world, partly to entertain us,
but also to make our lives (theoretically) easier. We were so
enchanted by this that we used all of our time to make it better,
faster, wilder and effortless. But that was not good enough – we
craved all this, but with more realism, hence the development of
virtual reality, augmented reality, and – now in all its 3-D glory –
hologram people.
At last our technology has evolved to give a three-dimensional
life experience.
Uhmm. Isn’t that what we had before?
May the gods preserve us from The Donald, who has the money
to buy everything needed to project himself all over the place. He
is probably asking Apple right now to spy on Huawei to get the
benefit of the very latest in Holograms for Twitter. And someone
warn Queen Elizabeth: The Donald took quite a fancy to her, and
he could move a hologram of himself into Buckingham Palace
quite soon. One wonders if even this advanced hologram
technology will be able to effectively reproduce the exact
orange skin tone for him.
S M A R T
E
Just a thought
Are we getting too clever for our own good?
Not so long ago, in the era before smartphones, clever kettles
and screens with a tendency to overthink everything, human
beings lived a three-dimensional life out in the world, connected
when, how and with whom they wanted to. Time was not the
most sought-after commodity; we had enough of it. Sometimes
it passed too quickly, often it dragged, but we knew that was just
part of the rhythm of life, and we had the power to dictate how
we balanced it. We spent time outdoors and indoors, working
and playing, together and solo.
Di Brown