OUR GAME OF EMPIRES (*)

(*) "Our" meaning: in our present time.

The war that according to some of those who actually survived 

the trenches, had proved to be “not worthwhile”.

The emperors disappeared,

but the fight was not over.

In came new emperors:

emperors of collectivism

and emperors of sheer madness.

A real world War arose.

Most of all, WWII was the Great Generals War,

directed by enlightened and persuasive politicians

(on the Allied side)..

After that freedom and democracy

gained the upper hand

(though wars and dictatorship still remain).

Yet empires still exist, and they still rule:

the empires of commerce and finance

plus the empires of military power.

The great powers have substantial overkill capacity,

enough to destroy the planet many times over.

So the question arises: what really do we want.

What will the next great strive be about?

Will it be: who is the smartest and the strongest [1],

or who will best help preserve our planet?

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[1] ) Are they the same?

ITS FICTION IS THE GREATEST GIFT OF EVERY GENERATION

Teddy Roosevelt portrayed in the TV-series The Alienist

Not the facts, but our fantasies count most in the future

I was watching a new TV-series called The Alienist. It is set in New York the late 19th century, the era of the Robber Barons, with J.P. Morgan as their Zeus at the pinnacle. The Catholic Church is involved intimately. The series offer an excellent representation of the rich and the poor, the vicious and the righteous. Teddy Roosevelt is portrayed as the New York commissioner of police, a position he never held. But he is pictured as a hero of a kind, so the American sentiments about him are fully satisfied.

There is much to say for history to be explained with fiction. The TV-series present a very credible view of the world of the late 1890’s in America. And yes, much government effort went into stemming the tide of corruption. As a president Teddy Roosevelt in fact succeeded in crushing the Robber Baron monopolies.  It is what the civilized world has always done, to pass its greatest fiction, myths and legends, alongside its history, and sometimes intermingled, from generation to generation.

And then there is fiction elevated to become history. The genesis of Christianity is the great example. The four Gospels are an effort in deliberately historicizing fiction that already floated for many decades. Our era is based on the birth date of someone who never existed. The life of Jesus was created as the people’s most desired fiction of God’s love and personal sacrifice but also as a mighty vehicle to command the historical process thereafter. Thus the powerful fantasy of one religion became the historical backbone of our entire civilization.

In fact, most civilizations have some historicized fantasy at their heart. Similarly quite a few myths are the heart of national histories. Think of King Arthur and his Camelot, or Homer’s Odyssey.

Given the vast and detailed historical records of our time, it is far less likely for our fiction to become historicized in a similar way. Even so, the day may come when people are led to believe that Superman really existed. Or it may be the the reverse: history being turned into legend. This may be the case, for instance, with the story of Anne Frank or the life and times of John F. Kennedy and his Camelot.

Otherwise, even without becoming historicized much of the fiction of our generation has the potential to far outlive our history. Think of the many epic movies we pass on, both of fiction and fictionalized history. Who will know, many thousands of years from now, which one was true and which one wasn’t? In the end the truth of it all doesn’t really matter. It is what we wish to believe.

TRUMP REJECTS CLIMATE AGREEMENT

CALL ON THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

YOUR PRESIDENT HAD ALL RIGHTS AND OPPORTUNITY TO RAISE HIS POINTS, HIS OBJECTIONS OR DOUBTS

I think he should still be given this opportunity. The participant nations in the Paris Climate Treaty should preferably take the initiative soon. The should cordially invite the US president to clarify his case, and perhaps offer help in overcoming severe obstacles.

I am expressing this from my deepest personal – family – roots in the history of the American people. And in a sense, given that ancestry, I am American too, even as a 100% Dutchman. All of us – in the United States and Europe – share this fundamental history, and the values that went with it. 

It would truly be a shock to us all if we cannot share one of the greatest challenges in human history, the preservation of the livelihood of our planet.

SOUL IN A SHELL

Tonight I watched the movie Ghost in a Shell, with Scarlet Johansson playing the lead role as a woman whose brains were transplanted into a humanoid robot. Much of her quest is about retrieving her personal memories prior to the transplant and getting to understand why this happened in the first place.

I wonder if at any time in the future a brain transplant of this kind would become feasible, if any kind. But even to imagine this is a powerful thought which takes me to the age old human fascination with life after death. With a brain transplant, I assume, its actual mortality still prevails. As an individual we may survive longer, but we still die. A living, organic brain thus far is the only vehicle to carry our memories, our feelings, our thoughts, in short: our soul. Perhaps we can transplant it, but we cannot transfer it to another medium without questioning whether such transfer would indeed retain the original living conscience or just another version, or copy of it. The original would be effectively dead.

Perhaps, indeed in the far future, many eras from now, there might be another answer. We stand at its very beginning. At best we can today leave a digital copy behind of our memories and thoughts, our voice even, images and movie clips in whatever format. It is the very thing that I have been building up, in the course of the recent years: the box which I have dubbed “Digital Me”. The box in fact is an external hard drive with some 250GB disk space. I hope to live long enough (I am 65) at least to double the total data stored.

Digital Me contains my life in pictures, home movies, video clips, text documents with notes, articles and books published, professional documents, special files about topics of my interest, in short: a collection of everything about me that will remain accessible (long) after I am gone. If the Egyptian pharaohs had access to similar technology, they would not have built their pyramids. But however far I take this collection of things in my mind, it will never really be a ‘copy’ of me in the fullest sense.

But indeed, in our time we already have come very far in storing and reproducing (printing or projecting) our lives’ memories, far beyond any type of collection in history. Our heirs and descendants might even have too much of it, this almost infinite heritage of (digital) images, movies and memories of our generations. It is for them to decide what to do with it, a time goes by, and perhaps along the lines of new technologies that could bring these memories ‘to life’.

With Digital Me I am doing my bit, or rather: my bytes. And hopefully, there will be those in the future who will enjoy a walk through my digital mind and relive some fragments of ‘me’ as I have enjoyed them alive and kicking.

ALREADY DONALD TRUMP SPENT EVERY BENEFIT OF MY DOUBT

LIVING IN AUGMENTED REALITY

It is time to throw the use of the term ‘virtual' out of the window

Recently I explained the wonders of digital virtual reality to an uncle and aunt, both in their 90's. I told them I had just had my first experience of 3D, using a Playstation VR headset while ‘being’ Lara Croft in Rise of the Tomb Raider.  When I told them about the real-life sensation of walking around in a virtual room, my aunt was bemused. “But isn’t the real world good enough?”  Of course, in most respects reality cannot be beaten, however much 3D games and movies using computer generated imagery in the mean time have filled our brains with awe inspiring sceneries and sensations that ‘reality’ can never provide.

In this light one could say that the use of the term ‘virtual reality’ holds a contradiction. For rather than that they are trying to increasingly match reality, the movie and games industries have – greatly - surpassed it. Virtual reality today is far more than reality, not a little less. Secondly, I think that the greatest leap forward will not be any kind of equivalence of the real and the virtual, but the intrusion – and ultimate fusion - of one another. In this world the virtual and the real together become ‘enhanced’ or ‘augmented reality’ (AR), a term already widely used.

Examples of this fused AR already exist, for instance Google Glasses and Hololens (Microsoft), both still being subject to further development.  Perhaps the same applies to Pokémon Go, which became an instant hype when it was launched. It pushed people out of their homes and catch imaginary digital monsters in the streets, in parks and public buildings, “blending digital fantasy and tangible reality in exciting and sometimes dangerous ways,” as one review phrased it. The hype soon passed, it was just a teaser of AR things to come.

Nonetheless AR applications also include the realities which already have become standard, e.g. in the car industry, through manifold electronic devices (automatic backwards in-parking, warning signals in dense traffic). It won’t take long before cars are talking to us, not just our electronic navigation device.

Let's think of the long term prospects. One website offering some predictions tells us: "augmented reality is exciting new technology, and there are probably ways to use it that will emerge in the coming years that we can't yet even imagine".

Still, it is not difficult to picture this blended world of the natural and the digital, where people move around, anywhere and anytime, doing various transactions along the way, either buying or selling, and thus fulfilling their niche in a globalized (as much as purely regionalized cyberspace. This may seem very abstract, but in fact we already have made our first steps in such a multidimensional space. Just apply Pokémon Go technology to your grocery store. and the next minute your purchases are ready to be picked up (it is a reality in China). Or alternatively, click your car with any remote device (probably your Smart Phone), and it will drive out of the parking by itself and open the driver's door before your doorstep. Next you produce and sell a valuable 'thing' or service, you press "print" or "send", you do the transaction, and it will literally materialize at some distant spot, whilst costs and revenues are automatically recorded in your bookkeeping, subtracting taxes (e.g. V.A.T.) along the way. When doing this, you may be comfortably sitting on a beach side, or perhaps doing some typing work in a flexible office.

Increased personal flexibility and mobility translate into flexible and mobile on-demand production and service outlets with also do the pickup and delivery at your fingertip's notice. We transact, we communicate, we "see" all we need to respond and co-operate in AR networks, in trains, in our own car (when it is directed by satellite systems) etc.

Let's just hope we can still enjoy real-life human company at dinner time and some physical paperwork if need be.