We’ve been waiting a long time for technology to deliver us an alternative reality, like the future in H.G. Wells’s “Time Machine,” Nemo’s Matrix, or the universe of code navigated by the “Neuromancer” hacker, Case. The future has arrived, finally ”” by the prosaic hand of our cellphones. Chances are it will soon be sponsored by laundry detergent or a fast-food chain.
Just the other day, my iPhone showed me an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art that most people around me didn’t know was there. Looking at the galleries through the phone’s camera, I saw a chunk of the Berlin Wall floating before me. There were faces suspended in midair in the museum’s immense atrium. Over the sculpture garden hovered a path through the desert along which illegal immigrants often die.
Other than being the venue, MoMA had nothing to do with the show….
I remember reading Fahrenheit 451 long years ago. I remember laughing about the lady who wanted the fourth wall televisions so she could be totally immersed in a tv show in which she was a participant.
She wanted nothing to do with the real world. This level of technology was so ABSURD, so unthinkable, such people so beyond all credibility, I mean, who would want to live in a world like this…………..?
And now, look. Larry