"According to String Theory, what appears to be empty space is actually a tumultuous ocean of strings vibrating at the precise frequencies that create the 4 dimensions you and I call height, width, depth and time.” ― Roy H. Williams
“The future cannot be predicted, but futures can be invented.” - Dennis Gabor
SPACE is money.
What if, as we enter the post-digital age, time were no longer money?
What if it were space?
Not the dubious space of a virtual metaverse, but actual space?
Globalization, to resurrect a tired coinage, saw time and space converge as to be almost synonymous. All time was now. Everywhere was here. But as we see in the Twenty Twenties, reality is more nuanced. Location is still everything. Everywhere else is not here.
And if human beings have lived largely linear lives attempting to accelerate time in all things from transport and product development to instant gratification, how have they attempted spatial innovation?
As time disappears in a constant blur of speed, space still surrounds us. And most of it is dead space, empty air. Empty space is the world’s most abundant resource, and there are so many ways it can be utilized more imaginatively.
This book is about four of those ways.
When I was a kid television was everything, and even cinema held sway. What kid was not entranced by the fizzing holograph of Princess Leia sizzling into being before our eyes in STAR WARS? Holography has been around at least as long as television, but unlike television it has not become a mass medium of communication.
Well, in the third decade of a new millennium that is about to change. For a number of critical reasons, spatial reality is about to actually be. Smartphones and goggles may be the immediate launch points for this spacious adventure, but be sure this is not about virtual reality per se.
Let’s not depart for the metaverse before we are done with the universe. And the universe is composed chiefly of empty space. You do not have to disappear into a pretend world to enjoy a better world. Augmented reality offers us a better clue here than virtual reality, because the latter is confined chiefly to the digital realm. Augmented reality, as the name implies, builds on the real world to take its effect.
A hologram may form part of an Augmented Reality approach, but the complete holography of spatial reality is still completely different. Imagine for a moment it is the year 1907 and you are watching the first feature-length movie on earth, THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY. For a change, a narrative action is continuously developed and audiences are enraptured beyond an initial few minutes. Now imagine a high-end spectacular film from this century such as AVATAR with all its special effects and consider the two movies in parallel. This is the difference between the state of holography yesterday and the near-future state it will soon reach. As we speak, we are rapidly approaching a world beyond VR and AR, a world I call the spatial realm where continuous narrative devices are deployed involving people, products, places and data to form a whole new mass medium.
It is a cliché to believe data is the new oil. Information is not the currency we exchange, not even actionable insight. The fuel the modern world runs on is human attention, plain and simple. Narrative is the kingmaker in the attention economy. Your narrative ability to connect one moment to the next – to earn and sustain audience attention – is key. Note that the word narrative and the word science actually have the same original meaning – to know. Science knows things through experiment, by a process of elimination. Narrative knows them through experience, by releasing feelings in other people.
There have been seven eras of human narrative to date, from poetry and drama to fiction, cinema, radio, television and the internet. The internet is still the dominant narrative mode in the world today – but it is no longer the emerging one. Note that as each new medium of narrative comes along, it literally sidelines the once-dominant one. Poetry, drama and fiction are not extinct but they are sidelines in the world’s obsessive focus on multi-media formats, audio and visual. Holography – a word that means “written fully or as a whole” – is about to become the eighth narrative medium of homo narrans.
Most of my life I’ve been attracted to scientific methods and the experimental approach. I’ve discovered things and invented things largely as a process of elimination. In the course of my career as an entrepreneur I’ve built and sold businesses connected with holography, whether involving people, products or places. But I’ve also discovered the narrative method beyond science that builds tribes and communities. It’s actually easy to invent something. The hard part is inventing your audience. Products are easy in fact. The difficult part of products is bringing them to meet your market and succeeding.
In fact, if you think about the difficult part of anything it involves attention. Most human performers, manufactured goods, cultural spaces or data sets fail not in themselves but for lack of an audience. Notice how, in English at least, we pay attention because literally that is the currency. The media, and social media in particular, have grown expert at stealing our attention through millions of lurid headlines and interruptive pop-ups – the thousand micro-thefts each day is made of. But earning my attention so I voluntarily pay it is something else entirely. And for me to keep paying attention, you must keep earning.
. . .
A quick note from Author and Holographer, Paul Duffy
My heart felt thanks for taking the time to read the first few pages of the Prologue, Watch This Space.
It's the start of a fascinating journey into the next decade of technology, communications and narrative storytelling that will touch all facets of our lives.
I encourage you to sign-up for the Insiders Club (email only) and i will send you updates as new previews for each chapter drop.
Until then remember, soon Space will be Money.
~ Paul Duffy
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