“Not everything that counts can be counted.” Big Al Einstein
I have had this thing going on in my head for weeks now. I’ve been looking for a way to share it that wouldn’t make me seem like someone, who knew too much or not enough. It’s the whole virtual business that has captured my mind. Trust me, I am merely a witness and not a player.
I guess it would be easy for someone my age to claim it was the Sixties that changed the game for me, but I don’t buy it. The brick and mortar evolution of telecommunications was the tease for my age group, quietly evolving beyond the spotlight. I worked in the broadcast advertising business and the shaky experiment of cable television was a commercial experiment during my early years, but nothing like the plethora of possibilities was thought of back then.
I left NYC and the world of Mad Men in ’87. The fax machine was a miracle. You could send pictures through the telephone! The computer was either in a refrigerated roomful of cold metal with flashing lights or a simple contraption that sat on the desk of every secretary, because real men didn’t type.
The internet hit when I was living in Santa Fe, NM, in a small adobe house in the middle of precisely nowhere. Christ, I was already fifty years old and remember having a purple, plastic Apple computer bought for me by a guy I was working with to develop and distribute a silicone, baby bottle in the shape of a breast. I shit you not!
So, when I think about all that I have experienced, I would have to say the development of the internet was my experiential, ground zero. It has changed my life in so many ways, way more of a social revolution than the earth shaking Sixties by far.
Getting old is stranger than you could ever imagine. Now, when I think about the future, it is a time that will happen after my time. The future is what has been on my mind recently.
I spend so much of my time looking at where we are and how dark the future appears. In my life, I have never seen a time that offers so little hope going forward. It feels like a Thelma and Louise moment, pedal to the metal, talking about tomorrow’s possibilities and coming up empty.
I gotta tell you, one of the liberating things about being a writer, who is not important, is that I can say and do whatever I want and not have to read about it the next day.
I wrote the preceding paragraphs this past Friday evening and I was hoping that tonight I could write about my experience with a virtual reality piece of hardware. Well, that’s not going to happen until tomorrow, which, in a way, fits the momentum of this story anyway, so you work with what you got.
I have a very different perspective on the future than many of you. When I look at the implications of our stunning, global inaction regarding the imminent threat of the climate catastrophe, the moronic level of our political discourse, not to mention the criminal discrepancy between rich and poor, I am comforted knowing I will not be around for any resolution regarding the ripped fabric of our humanity.
However, I am truly fascinated by the next step in our relationship with technology, where we finally enter its world and become inseparable from it. Fortunately for both of us, my imagination is restricted by my discomfort in this new world, partially because of the decades of brick and mortar baggage I carry with me. The only thing I am certain is that we have just begun this journey into the machine, where the borders between imagination and our lives starts getting blurred.
Tomorrow, I am looking forward to entering the virtual world and it is the story I wanted to share tonight, but it must wait for both of us………….
It is now Sunday morning and I don’t have much time, because the sun is up and I will be leaving soon for my ritual motorcycle ride with the Sons of Kauai. I am a lousy liar and even though I could write anything at all and you’d never know the difference, I have a confession.
Last night, after sharing that my maiden, virtual experience was put off until today, I heard from Raoul, my make-believe tour guide. He had just arrived at the space, where he keeps his hardware. I was so anxious to share more of this story with you, I left the house to have my first virtual reality experience. How would it look, if after my big build up to you, I decided to pass on this first opportunity?
Raoul did the best he could to explain to me what I was getting into as soon as I arrived. As someone, who has never played a video game in his life, the hand controls, with their buttons and levers, were a tough adjustment. Next, came the scuba-like mask, which fit over my eyes, my visual passport to a world in its technological infancy.
It is now Sunday afternoon and while I thought there’d be more to share, because of a second, planned meeting with Raoul, it didn’t happen. So, let’s return to Saturday evening and my lost techno-virginity. The programming and hardware are in their infancy. I know there are already shoes that allow you to move within the environment you are seeing through the goggles, maneuvering with your hand controls. Raoul didn’t want to blow my mind, so my first experience involved Google Maps and the ability to move all over the planet.
As someone, who struggles royally with technology, convinced it is a plot to drive me mad, I am not the guy to talk about the worlds that await so many of you. Eventually, you will leave your world behind and enter an alternate existence, a perfectly, programmed world, experiencing a kind of satisfaction that can only happen in your mind, completely untethered from your daily dose of anxiety and uncertainty.
I spend a great deal of time reading and observing the inevitable, submission hold mankind is walking right into, seemingly oblivious to the truth of the climate and human crises we have created, victims of our gluttony and absence of compassion.
The escape into virtual reality is perfectly timed and not by accident. The challenges we are all facing are huge and overwhelming. We are all sitting on the deck of the Titanic, grabbing the hardware that will allow us to walk on a beach in the Bahamas or have a fabulous Indian meal in Mumbai. Eventually, we will be able to inhale the aroma of the spices and feel completely sated, until the timer runs out and we find ourselves sitting on a chair in an empty room.