While I’m still enchanted as always with new technology, I’ve been reluctant to share that enthusiasm as it feels to me that our current obsession with hoisting ourselves upon the petard of stupidity requires the addressing of fundamentals such as education and acceptance of diversity as important precursors before we embark on explorations of complexity. But life is not just about the basics, and besides, who will I ever convince that the way forward and into the future is through the struggle with those things that force us to wrestle with our own ignorance?

In some people’s eyes, I’m old. With less than three years before I turn 60, I’m already eligible to be a member of AARP. This organization is the Association of American Retired Persons and one only needs to be 50 to join, and I, in fact, am a member. At first, I wasn’t very inclined to join as it felt like an acknowledgment of being old, which is anathema to being a participating member of mainstream America. Then, with some reluctance, I accepted that the discounts for hotels and rental cars were worth the price of admission. So, while I might be considered old by some, I’m not ready for a couch; we don’t even own one, nor do we own a TV. I’m not into golf, motorhomes, or grandchildren, as we don’t have those either. But I am still into the shit that blows my mind.

When I was younger and looking for the meaning of life and god, I turned to philosophy, science, sociology, music, art, technology, and various psychedelics to help illuminate a world that seemed hidden to me. That dark world was a place of curiosity that seemed shut off to the majority of people encountered. They wanted to mine what they knew and revel in what had been. They were archaic, empty shadows of the humans who, at one time, embraced the unknown and raced into adventures. Sure, we’d been to the poles, to the depths of the ocean, and touched the moon, but it felt like we’d been nowhere regarding our own minds. Today, I find confirmation of that bias all around me. Collectively, we are idiots.

This, though, isn’t supposed to be a lament of society’s direction and lack of focus or what propelled my curiosity. It is supposed to be a question of why, with so much opportunity to scale the heights of the impossible, are we, as a society, pandering to the lowest common denominators? The “LCD” humans that a famous politician once referred to as the “Undesirables” are all of a sudden dictating the rollback of progress, so their lack of intellectual gumption can earn a silver star, and they can feel good about their failure to evolve. Fuck that.

John, what’s triggering your anger? I recently received the August/September issue of AARP – The Magazine. Kevin Costner is on the cover with promises to talk about the American West, fatherhood, creativity, and old-fashioned values. There’s a story about pets, Carol Burnett, sunblock, home improvements, and the Geriatrics Crisis. Ah, you say they covered creativity in the issue? Nope, unless Kevin Costner being in a band and acting is inspiring others to explore their own creativity. This magazine is a window into older America, boring old shits fascinated with celebrity, spectator sports, TV, the Standard American Diet, their ailments from sitting around doing nothing, and occasionally being teased with the idea they too could master TikTok. But isn’t this all just a form of agitprop or maybe agedprop? What I mean is, isn’t this a kind of information conformity warfare meant to wrap people in the banality of comfort instead of agitating them to find new horizons?

Seven years ago, in 2013, the Oculus Rift DK1 was released of which I was a Kickstarter backer. By April 2014, I had started a small company to build a virtual world; it was known as Hypatia and was originally meant to be a casual learning environment for the exploration of the arts. Prior to my fulfilling a 20-year dream of virtual reality becoming a thing, I’d been diving deep into the world of video while learning Adobe’s Premiere and After Effects along with a host of plugins. This was a natural extension of my work with DSLRs that were all of a sudden sporting 1080p video recording capability that paired with nice lenses, were offering the kind of quality reserved for film. A revolution was at hand that would grow exponentially as smartphones embraced digital video, but I’d have to put that on hold as VR held greater sway over me. Virtual reality was where video, photographs, art, music, exploration, learning, meeting, chatting, and commerce could all converge and give me my own private SoHo or Left Bank in Paris. Well, I was too early, and the demand for computer “gaming” content that didn’t involve violence was too niche a market, and it was even smaller in a world where there were still very few VR headsets.

Along the way, I encountered more amazing software and started falling in love with Eurorack modular synthesizers. Crypto-currency was gaining traction, as was artificial intelligence, after more than 50 years in the lab and on the periphery of the sciences. Video was heading for mainstream adoption of 4k resolution, and Tesla’s Model S was going in the same direction in popular acceptance. The whole time these revolutions were happening it felt that there was a wider reluctance to fully embrace the changes these technologies were offering. It feels that these breakneck advances alienated so many people that by 2016, fear drove people to embrace populism to return the world to the way it was.

So here we are at the tail end of what will have been the Age of Fake. Fake concern, fake politics, fake worries, and fake people who snatched the Post Reality reigns of mass delusion and manipulated a frightened population into what is becoming a kind of mass suicide. Yes, COVID-19 was the catalyst for killing and maiming the old, but it is the policies of obfuscation that propelled the selfish to endanger themselves and everyone else. We are turning inward in a toxic war that smacks of Jim Jones’ efforts in Guyana that ended in 900 people taking their lives back in 1978; was that a dress rehearsal for 2021?

How in the world is this blog entry about my love of technology after dumping all this spleen on the reader? We need to course-correct this ship and move into the Post-Fake era of Super Enlightenment, and that requires all the tools of technological discovery that humanity can throw at our problems. From the environment, viruses, ignorance, poverty, racism, social and economic imbalances, war, and all the other malaise that threatens us and the other life that shares our planet, we humans must lead a charge of advancement or hope that far worse forms of plague are able to stop this reckless species. I, for one, want to see us do good and stop or at least slow down our slip into the abyss.