by Gerald Huff
VIRTUAL REALITY / WASHINGTON
Harry Paxton’s lightweight VR headset had no Mental Intention interface, so he was using a small handheld controller to navigate the village.
The hyper-realistic sights and sounds fascinated him, even as a good part of his brain knew he was still driving around Washington.
He was wondering what this VR program was about and why Rena had recommended it when a figure emerged from behind one of the huts. She was a lovely young Indian woman wearing a white sari. He guessed she was about fifteen. He turned toward her and stepped forward, using the controller.
“Hello,” she said in slightly accented English. “My name is Sara Dhawan. I am sixteen years old and in real life I currently live in London. I’d like to welcome you to this virtual reality experience, which starts in my birth village in India.”
VIRTUAL REALITY / LOS ANGELES
Tenesha automatically replied, “Hello, Sara.” The young woman smiled, bowed her head slightly, and asked, “And what is your name?”
“My name? I’m Tenesha.” This was highly unusual. The characters looked so real they could have been captured with a VR camera. But this young woman Sara was clearly interacting with her, which meant she had to be computer generated.
The young woman gestured toward the center of the village. “Nice to meet you, Tenesha. Would you care to walk with me? I’d like to tell you a story.”
Tenesha engaged her Mental Intention interface and thought herself forward. “Where are we?” she asked Sara.
The young woman turned her head while they walked. “This is the village where I grew up, near Doultanwali, in India. In fact, this is a special day in the history of the village, and in my story.
“Look, there I am, when I was just six years old.”
Tenesha looked where teenage Sara was pointing. She spotted a young girl in a dirty brown dress helping her mother prepare lunch.
“It was just an ordinary day, Tenesha, but something extraordinary is about to happen. Do you see that cloud of dust in the distance? Do you know the William Gibson quote? The future is here; it’s just not evenly distributed yet. Well, that’s the future arriving in my village.”
The little girl ran toward the dust cloud, her mother calling after her disapprovingly in Hindi.
By the time Tenesha and Sara arrived at the edge of the village, the cloud had resolved into a beat-up pickup truck. It parked in an open field just off the road, and two men rolled a shed of some kind down a ramp.
Young Sara and other curious children crowded around the men, peppering them with questions.
VIRTUAL REALITY / WASHINGTON
“This shed is a solar-powered, net-connected learning system,” Sara explained to Harry. “It was part of an international program to make education available to children all over the developing world who might otherwise not have the opportunity. Embedded in the shed is a high-end tablet computer.
“Most of the children in my village played with the tablet and taught themselves basic skills. I was drawn to it like a magnet and made much more progress.
“Here I am one year later.”
With a wave of her hand, the scene blurred. A new scene emerged.
Now seven-year-old Sara was standing alone in front of the tablet. Harry could hear her speaking in rudimentary English to an AI tutor, who corrected her grammar from time to time. They were in the middle of a math lesson which sounded very advanced for a seven-year-old.
Harry walked around to the side of the shed using his controller, squatted down, and looked straight at young Sara. “Your younger self can’t see me,” he said aloud.
The teenaged Sara moved beside him. “No, she cannot. We are just observers here, invisible to these people. Much as they are invisible to the rest of the world, living as subsistence farmers in a remote corner of India.
“But that’s about to change, at least for me.”
The tablet screen flashed. The AI tutor cut out abruptly and the girl took a step back. A middle-aged Indian woman appeared on the screen and spoke in Hindi.
“Let me translate,” offered teenage Sara. “That is my new teacher, Asha. She is telling me that my interactions with the tablet had identified me as having great potential. She wants to talk to me and teach me directly sometimes.”
Harry could see the curiosity and excitement on young Sara’s face.
VIRTUAL REALITY / LOS ANGELES
“Now, here we are about one year later, on another important day,” Sara said.
The image blurred. Then Tenesha and Sara were back at the shed. The young girl stood with her parents, who were talking with the teacher and a man in a suit. “Asha and Mohan are here from New Delhi,” teenaged Sara said. “They are explaining that I am an extraordinary student and are offering to take me to a school in the city and give me a great education, free of charge.”
Tenesha looked back and forth between the adults. Sara’s father was frowning and her mother was crying. Young Sara pulled her hand from her mother’s and boldly stepped over to Asha, speaking to her parents rapidly and defiantly.
“I was quite headstrong and selfish,” said teenage Sara. “I am insisting on going to New Delhi. It never occurred to me the pain this would cause my family. Ultimately, they agreed, for which I am eternally grateful.”
VIRTUAL REALITY / WASHINGTON
Harry watched the car drive off with the young Sara and turned to her teenaged version. She was watching her parents shuffle back to their hut with tears in her eyes. “I’ve been so busy I haven’t gone back to visit them once,” Sara said. She wiped her eyes and composed herself. “Would you like to see the school I attended after New Delhi, in London?”
Harry’s Waymo was still some distance from its destination. “Sure, let’s go to London.”
Sara waved a hand. The scene dissolved, leaving them standing in a gray nothingness. Then, with another gesture, she faded them into a nighttime scene in a modern building, sparsely furnished with steel and glass tables loaded with computers and VR equipment. “Here I am a few years ago. I was a voracious learner, and not one much for sleep.” The girl sitting at one of the tables was thin and gangly, fresh from a growth spurt. She was speed-reading a document flashing by on a large monitor.
“What are you studying?” asked Harry, walking around the sleek London library.
“That was a macroeconomics text. It was quite fortuitous, because this is the moment that launched me on my current mission.”
Harry looked up from the intensely focused student in jeans and a sweatshirt to the sari-wearing teenager. “Mission?”
She nodded, then held up her hand and pointed.
Harry turned his head in the Waymo in Washington and scanned the nighttime room in London. He used the controller to turn toward the far entrance to the room, where a cleaning robot was entering.
The robot moved steadily, simultaneously vacuuming, arranging chairs, and dusting the tables. He turned back toward the younger Sara. She glanced up at the intruding robot and scowled at the interruption, then quickly returned her focus back to the scrolling document.
Suddenly her eyes widened.
Even though it was just a re-creation, Harry was sure he had just witnessed an aha! moment. “What happened?” he asked.
VIRTUAL REALITY / LOS ANGELES
Tenesha turned her head away from the cleaning robot and watched the younger Sara’s face carefully. Over the course of thirty seconds, it progressed from surprise to growing awareness to concern. Then it formed into determined resolve.
“You look like you just discovered something very important,” Tenesha said.
“I had just been reading an economics text that mentioned janitors when the robot entered the room. I began to reflect on everything I had learned about technology over time and the current state of advanced economies. That robot convinced me that we are facing a fundamental problem and we are not on a path to solving it.”
“What problem is that?”
“Well, that’s the second story I want to tell you.” Teenaged Sara waved her hand and faded the scene once again to pure gray nothingness.
“Where are we?” asked Tenesha, lifting her hand to block the harsh sun from her eyes, even though she was inside her Los Angeles apartment.
“This is the African savannah around 10,000 BC,” explained Sara. “We’re going to take a little walk through history to tell this story.”
As Tenesha’s eyes adjusted to the glare, she saw human figures moving around the landscape.
“After over two million years as a recognizably human species, these people cook and eat plants and animals and are largely nomadic. Their lives are essentially the same as their predecessors five thousand, ten thousand, even a million years ago. Think about that enormous amount of time without any change at all. These humans have harnessed two important natural phenomena—the combustion of wood and the flaking of stone—and invented spears, axes, clothing, and basic shelter. That is the full extent of their technology.
“Now, at any point during our walk through time, you can look straight down and see important information in a chart. Different lines on the chart show global population, infant mortality, the percentage of all people living at a subsistence level, and economic activity per capita. If you look at it now, you will see there are perhaps ten million humans, with infant mortality above fifty percent, and one hundred percent of the population is at a subsistence level.”
Tenesha looked straight down. A chart appeared at her feet with “10,000 BC” at the top.
VIRTUAL REALITY / WASHINGTON
“Why the history lesson?” asked Harry.
“I want to tell you a story about humanity and technology,” explained Sara. “Technology is the single most powerful enabler we have to create a better life for everyone on this planet. I want to show what it has done for us so far and what it can do in the future, if we can organize ourselves to take advantage of it.”
“That’s interesting. I don’t have much time—can we skip ahead?”
“Of course. The fact is, not much happens for the bulk of humanity for thousands of more years.”
Sara took Harry to the bustling port town of Alexandria, Egypt.
“So here we are, ten thousand years later—over five hundred generations. Humanity has harnessed new phenomena of nature. We have invented sailing, the wheel, papyrus, iron smelting, and writing. Even though there are now three hundred million people on Earth, communication among them is slow, and it can take many decades for innovations to spread.”
Harry looked down at the statistics. While the Earth’s population had grown, it had done so very slowly. Infant mortality was still over thirty percent, and almost all humans still lived subsistence lives.
“Yes, I see,” he said. “There wasn’t a lot of progress. When do we get to the good stuff?”
Sara smiled. “Yes, I know this early history moves slowly. But it’s important to understanding the times we live in. Look around and then we’ll walk ahead another thousand years.”
“This looks more familiar,” said Harry. They were standing on a narrow dirt street near the top of a hill in an ancient city. He could see hundreds of wooden and stone buildings spread out before them.
“We’re in Rome around 1000 AD,” said Sara. “The famous structures you are familiar with are in ruins, as ancient Rome was sacked about six hundred years ago.”
As they walked down the street, Harry observed the daily routine of what appeared to be peasant farmers. “Over one thousand years, humanity was able exploit a few more natural phenomena. We invented paper, steel, the horse stirrup, algebra, and gunpowder. The last, of course, is a good example of how we use technologies in both good and bad ways.
“Building techniques have advanced, although it takes many decades to construct large stone structures. Society has invented hierarchical social structures to manage larger populations. Of course, if you observe the daily lives of the poor people around you, not much has changed in one thousand years. Diseases still run rampant. One out of every three children born will die in their first year. Almost every human on the planet lives at a subsistence level, with just enough food, water, clothing, and shelter to survive.”
VIRTUAL REALITY / LOS ANGELES
“Oh my God, what is that smell?” exclaimed Tenesha.
Sara smiled. “This is 1650 London. That odor is human and animal waste. There is no sanitation system for almost 300,000 people, and the Thames River is a cesspool. In fifteen years, there will be a plague outbreak that kills twenty percent of the population. But something very interesting is taking place inside this building.”
They walked into a two-story stone building and made their way past young men in waistcoats and wigs engaged in earnest discussion.
They ascended to a small, dusty room on the second floor lit by three generous windows that looked out onto a grassy courtyard. A group of well-dressed and wigged gentlemen stood around a table.
“The man speaking is Robert Boyle, considered the founder of modern chemistry. This is Gresham College, among the first institutions of higher learning in London, and a precursor to the Royal Society. Boyle is conducting an experiment and describing his particle theory of matter, which he will publish in a dozen years in the Sceptical Chymist.”
“Why is this so important?” asked Tenesha.
“You are watching the birth of the scientific method, an empirical approach to discovering knowledge about natural phenomena driven by hypotheses and experimentation. From this point forward, there will be a virtuous cycle of scientific discovery, the manufacturing of instruments that enable more discovery, and the application of scientific and industrial knowledge to solve humanity’s biggest problems.”
VIRTUAL REALITY / WASHINGTON
“It sure doesn’t seem like a lot of humanity’s problems are being solved!” Harry shouted. It was hard to hear over the din of the textile factory’s machinery and the yelling of many young boys and girls scrambling around the room. “I see rampant child labor, horrendous working conditions, and awful pollution.”
Sara nodded. “Yes, indeed, early industrialization here in 1810 Britain actually lowered standards of living for many who moved to the cities. It took significant social and civil institutional reforms to correct these problems.
“But society did adjust,” Sara continued. “We created rules to improve working conditions. And industrialization had tremendous benefits as we produced machinery and household goods at lower cost. Entrepreneurs innovated more products and services. Ordinary people, spending less on survival, could enjoy more goods that used to be considered luxuries. The standard of living started to creep up. And global population more than doubled in the two hundred years from 1650 to 1850. The prior doubling had taken over eight hundred years.”
VIRTUAL REALITY / LOS ANGELES
Tenesha found herself in a lab cluttered with old electronic equipment. Four men in their late thirties and early forties—all with buzz cuts, white shirts, and black ties—were talking excitedly. “What is this place?” she asked Sara.
“Bell Labs, New Jersey, 1949. This is William Shockley’s lab. He and his team have just proven the viability of the layered semiconductor transistor design. This is the moment when all digital computers became possible. Of course, vast amounts of energy and capital went into miniaturizing these transistors over time, but it all grew from this fundamental research.
“These men were funded by AT&T and Western Electric, firms that thrived by providing telephone communication systems to a growing U.S. population. It’s another cycle of innovation. As consumers have more disposable income, they spend it on innovations and the businesses that provide them grow and employ more people and do more research. It’s a virtuous cycle of investment, consumption, employment, and innovation.”
“Yes,” said Tenesha. “Market capitalism. You make it sound so great
, but things aren’t so rosy right now.”
“I agree,” said Sara. “This system is facing a major challenge.”
VIRTUAL REALITY / WASHINGTON
Harry and Sara stood near a large intersection filled with cars and the occasional cow. “Where are we?” Harry asked.
“This is Bangalore, India around the year 2000. Look down at the graph now,” prompted Sara.
Harry looked straight down and was startled to see what had happened to the basic indicators of human progress. Infant mortality and subsistence living plunged and per capita income soared, along with the Earth’s population. From 10,000 BC to 2000 the lines on the graph had been essentially flat for ninety-eight percent of the distance, then shot straight up or down in the last two percent.
“Life expectancy in India has almost doubled in the last fifty years. Modern medicine, clean water, sanitation, and the green revolution in food production have made a huge difference. And now information technology jobs here in India are fueling the local economy.
“Consider how quickly this has happened,” Sara continued, “Everything we consider progress, even the very idea of progress itself, has emerged in the blink of an eye. And it’s all been due to interlocking virtuous cycles of communication, innovation, energy use, scientific discovery, engineering, technology, productivity, employment, and economic growth. Today we’re capable of driving those lines even further straight up. But there’s a problem.”
“And that problem is…?”
“We are on the verge of developing new technologies that will usher in a true age of abundance. Inventions in nano-materials, bioengineering, personalized genomic medicine, fusion reactors, and electrostatic nano-capacitor energy storage all hold the promise of providing everyone on the planet with a safe, healthy, long, and productive life, including unprecedented conveniences and opportunities for personal development and expression.”