Please Pass the Chocolates
At the Future Today Summit, Immerse ran into audio producer and transmedia artist Karen Michel, who had some tough questions about the types of futures being touted. We asked her to elucidate…
I think that I’m underexcited by much of what’s intended to wow me. Take, VR, AI, and-worse: the cliche of “storytelling”—the current “Zen.” Both words overused, misused, diluted into meaninglessness. Ironic.
Add to those words the expressions, relevant here: “A picture is worth a thousand words,” and “Everyone has a story to tell.”
Well, dammit lots of pictures suck. As, of course, do many connected words.
There’s a false valuing here, or to use the academic term, privileging. As for those stories to tell: Could be, but few people can tell them. I write this as a person who has as a professional journalist, documentarian, and artist solicited thousands of people to tell me their stories, their personal narratives.
It’s such a joy to find the folks who can really talk, not the ones who assume they can.
Which brings me to the relatively recent Future Today Summit at the 92nd St. Y in New York. A place known for its cultural offerings, with a sweet auditorium. Otherwise, a mighty cramped space to hold a gathering of the well more than a hundred attendees—some media makers, at least one a retired nurse, another a retired teacher, eager youngish folks and others old enough to be their grandmothers. That was kind of cool. As was one of the reasons for the tight quarters in one of the two display rooms: an espresso bar, bless them.
Now, caveats: aka, an overview of the conference.
By definition, the future is over by the time we even say or write the word. So the Future Today Summit was always…old news. And, alas, from what I experienced it was about the Future Past. Or, perhaps, Missed.
One display on VR strapped visitors into the usual bulky headgear, but with a purpose: overcoming fear of heights. No big whoop, but at least practical.
Watson, however, stretched practicality. By entering your Twitter handle, you could find out which celebrity you were most like, according to Watson’s algorithms. Or, instead, and more tastily, sample chocolates of flavor combinations suggested by Watson. Earl Grey tea+chocolate; dried berries+chocolate; again, no big whoop. And, for me, depressing. Watson’s telling me about doppelganger celebrities or enabling my very sweet tooth?
We are in a time of piffle. Of selfies and selfishness. Witness the presidential election. Or perhaps witless it… In my few hour experience of the Future Today Summit, I saw folks having fun, heard others rehashing the past, and experienced a hint at a depressing future.
Please, oh please, get back to Watson playing chess. Perhaps in VR. No, don’t: Go beyond, way beyond, into a land far ahead of what this mortal can conceive. I can live without the chocolates. Though it did make me wonder if one of my editors would be interested in the piffling, the in-effect dumbing down, of Watson.
Which is weird in a time of the proliferation of self-driving cars, machines that pretend they’re your assistant/friend and creepily mimic sentience, and robots. As a person who’s always looking for an interesting story — and I’m not all that easy a sell — I want the unexpected. But maybe that wasn’t the Summit’s intent; hell, even choosing to call itself a “summit” implied, well, a plunge if not a gentle descent.
I may be asking too much. Or next time instead of an espresso bar, the beverage offering should be Kool-Aid?
Immerse is an initiative of Tribeca Film Institute, MIT Open DocLab and The Fledgling Fund. Learn more about our vision for the project here.