H+ Summit @ Harvard

Due to a schedule conflict I was unable to attend the Humanity+ Summit in person. Thankfully it was live streamed. I’ve included Ray Kurzweil’s Keynote here:

Ray, often in the spotlight these days, was even more visible than usual this weekend, with a multi-page story in the New York Times on Friday, as well as a brief bio at #62 in Fast Company’s list of the 100 Most Creative People in Business.

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While Ray (and fellow Keynote Speakers, Stephen Wolfram & Aubrey de Grey) may have drawn the crowds, it was a talk by Robert Tercek — President, Digital Media, OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network — that struck a nerve with me and, I think, many others as well. So I’ve included video of his talk below, as well as the slides from his presentation. While most of the speakers were intelligent and insightful, it was also well trodden ground for those active in this community. Ray is a great lecturer however, in this venue, he was inevitably preaching to the choir (with all the religious baggage that statement carries).

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My thoughts: To get traction, respect and most importantly goodwill beyond the inner-circle, the transhumanist/singulatarian community needs not only to put thought into these things, but action behind them. Renaming the organization Humanity+ (previously The World Transhumanist Association) was a big step in the right direction. But this is only superficial if it is not backed up with action. I have had some recent dialog with our Executive Director, Alex Lightman, regarding this matter. There is some intellectual discomfort by some in the movement with the fact that much of the research done in Transhumanist studies (nano-bio-info-cog) has been financed by the U.S. military. Patrick Lin’s lecture at the summit addressed some of these issues. But not all of this research has been focused on waging war. In recent years, a great deal of research financed by the U.S. Military has funded next-generation robotic prosthetics, artificial eyes, and other medical applications related to body/machine and brain/machine interfaces. This is due to the large number of disabled veterans returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — While battlefield casualties have dropped astoundingly since the days of World War II and even Vietnam, this is largely due to medical advances that have allowed more soldiers to survive wounds that in prior conflicts would have been fatal. The number of returning disabled veterans has risen at a rate near proportional to that which war related deaths have declined. This has left us with a very large number of disabled veterans from the past decade’s military conflicts. Consequently, the military has been investing heavily in human/machine interface technologies to improve the mobility and overall quality of life of these veterans. I have been espousing the position that Humanity+ should be looking for opportunities to get involved in veterans affairs. Whatever one’s position on any given conflict may be, we are the benefactors of this research, and these veterans have paid a very heavy price in order to be the guinea pigs for this research. Today’s American veterans are indeed humanity’s first true cyborgs. What form this involvement should take has not yet taken shape, but I have been in some informal dialog with Doug Thompson of Remedy Communications, to see if there isn’t a place for Humanity+ to either be involved in their efforts, or at least to advise us on where our community’s strengths could best be leveraged in assisting veterans. If Humanity+ is to be an organization that lives up to its name, this would be a very noble start.

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There were many other excellent speakers including Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari; Andrew Hessel, Co-Chair of Singularity University; and noted futurists like Natasha Vita-More, Ben Goertzel and John Smart… and one of my personal favorites, Patrick Hopkins, the spoiler, on why mind “uploading” will not work as life extension.

An announcement worth noting: during Hank Hyena’s excellent talk, Alex interjected to inform everyone that H+ Magazine, which had previously been sold to Better Humans and was recently put back up for sale, has now been reacquired by Humanity+ where it will be put immediately back into publication. Many readers may have never known it was shut down, save for a recent letter posted to the editor’s blog. The website was kept live, but as a contributing writer (1|2), R.U. has kept myself and other contributors in the loop on things going on behind the scenes to try and secure a new buyer. I am very pleased to know that H+ Magazine has survived the ordeal.

Thanks to David Orban, Chairman; and Alex Lightman, Executive Director of Humanity+ for making this event happen. Also a special thanks to Kevin Jain whom I am told was instrumental at securing Harvard as the venue for the event.

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Ray Kurzweil, June 24, NYC
Ray Kurzweil will be speaking in New York City on June 24th, at the New York film premier of his movie, The Singularity is Near, based on his best selling book of the same name — The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology.

Presented by the WTN Imagined Worlds Film Series, in association with TIME Magazine. Advanced ticket sales are available online for $35, or $55 at the door. Time & Life Building, 1271 Avenue of the Americas (6th Avenue) between West 50th & West 51st Streets. See Map.

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Disclosure: I am both a dues-paying member of Humanity+
and a contributing writer to h+ Magazine.

Augmented Reality Event, June 2-3

I’m both ecstatic and humbled to be a part of Augmented Reality Event, especially in its inaugural year. I would have been enthusiastic simply to attend such an event in its first year — Being invited to speak felt somewhat like I would imagine one of the side-stage bands must have felt, being invited to play Lollapalooza in 1991. This is going to be an event that grows, and I expect people will talk about in the coming years.

The Keynote speaker lineup is worth traveling for — Bruce Sterling, Will Wright, Blaise Aguera y Arcas and Jesse Schell. The exhibitors and other industry speakers make the event every bit worth attending, but putting together a rock-star supergroup like that for the Keynote speakers lineup… and for a first year event at that. Amazing! Anyone of those four guys alone would be a speaker worth attending to see.

Above, I’ve edited together the video montage above of appearances by Bruce, Will, Blaise and Jesse, speaking at other events; to get an idea what is in store, have a look.

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Bruce Sterling
In the 1980s, Bruce, along with William Gibson and Rudy Rucker, was one of the writers who created the Cyberpunk Science Fiction sub-genre. Though his stock has always remained high, his mainstream profile has been rising, as a futurist cultural commentator. As a contributing editor to WIRED Magazine, he has become a vocal advocate, some might say an evangelist, for Augmented Reality. He has also served as Visionary in Residence at the Art Center College of Design, in Pasadena, California.

Will Wright
Legendary game developer, in 1989 Will created SimCity, both one of the top selling, and one of the most influential computer games of all time. So successful it bloomed into an entire franchise including SimCity 2000, SimCity Societies, SimEarth and many others; spawning a whole genre of simulation games. He later went on to create TheSims, and most recently Spore — each a legendary game in its own right. Today Wright runs an entertainment development studio called, “Stupid Fun Club.”

Blaise Agüera y Arcas
Blaise founded software company SeaDragon, acquired by Microsoft in 2006. Since then his star has been rising like a rocket. One of Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People in Business, Newsweek’s multipage profile simply titles him “Super Hero”. Playing a leadership role at Microsoft LiveLabs, he has been one of the most popular speakers at TED. Blaise was recently promoted to Director of Bing Maps where many of the innovations developed at LiveLabs are now finding a home in shipped products.

Jesse Schell
Youthful diversions as a stand-up comic, and juggling circus clown groomed Jesse for his role as Creative Director for the Walt Disney Imagineering Virtual Reality Studio — seven years creating immersive visitor experiences for Walt Disney theme parks. In 2004 he left to start his own entertainment design firm, Schell Games, and was named one of the world’s top 100 young innovators by MIT Technology Review. Today Jesse also serves on the faculty of the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University.

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My own Talk is titled: Mobile AR, OOH and the Mirror World. I will be speaking on Thursday morning, June 3, at 9:20 AM in Ballroom H (Business Track, B12). I look forward to meeting some of you there.

I would like to thank Ori, Tish, whurley and Sean for making this event happen, and particularly thank Ori & Tish for inviting me to speak (no, for insisting that I speak).

This is the sort of event worth traveling for. And anyone on the West Coast has no excuse not to attend. I look forward to seeing you all there (and if you’re a friend or GigantiCo reader, get in touch with me ASAP. I have some promotional code discounts to share).

Predictions for 2010

This post is partially a response to Rouli Nir of Games Alfresco who wrote five predictions for 2010 in Augmented Reality. My site isn’t Augmented Reality specific, so I’ve posted three separate lists of five predictions each.

The first list has five predictions for Augmented Reality in 2010, the second has five predictions for the Internet in 2010, and because we’re at the beginning of a new decade, I’ve made five decade-long predictions.

Augmented Reality - 2010 Predictions

1. OOH advertisers will finally wake up and notice mobile in general, and mobile augmented reality specifically, is marching into their sandbox. Free Advice: Companies working on a mobile AR marketing strategy would do good to get advice from OOH and DOOH marketers. Smart agencies and media management firms will begin to coordinate mobile and OOH strategies and some will even formalize this within their management structure.

2. Mixed-reality AR will spur a renewed interest in 3D virtual worlds, which will experience a revival.

3. Marker based Augmented Reality will not prove to be the savior of print publications. The novelty will die quickly (but marker based AR will be huge in OOH). However, tablet devices will come to the rescue of what we know of as “print.” (In a few more years time time actual paper publications will become the domain of Art periodicals and some high-end fashion magazines as they are frequently produced in much higher resolution [as high as 1200 dpi] than news-weeklies and other mainstream publications [300 dpi]. This will not occur in 2010, but will take a few more years to play out).

4. Before the year is out, a translucent AR tablet device will be available on the consumer market. The concept as shown at left is of the Red Dot Award winning design of Mac Funamizu. With transparent OLED perfected by multiple vendors and begging for a consumer application, I expect to see this form factor show up on the market quite soon.

5. Someone will introduce a pair of AR glasses in the under $500 price range. The performance will be disappointing and they will look silly. But they will be loved by hardcore geeks willing to go gargoyle. Their awkwardness in public places will make the “talking to himself” guy with the bluetooth earpiece seem positively normal. However, their oddity will stir enough commotion to put them on the mass-culture radar inspiring at least one joke from a late night host. They will be a modest financial success and will encourage others to enter the field. It will take another year, as the technology matures, for Apple to enter the market. Like the Apple/Harman Kardon speaker system, and the Apple/Nike iPod Sports Kit, Apple will bring in a high profile partner from the designer eyewear market (candidates include Calvin Klein, Ray Ban, etc.).

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Internet - 2010 Predictions

1. In broadcast, media is expensive, and though production and creative development costs are high, they’re still cheap compared to media expenditures. Comparatively, online display media is dirt cheap. The shift in money allocation should be (modestly… at first) out of broadcast media and into digital production/creative (more sophisticated websites and higher quality online video content). This already happens — my anecdotal observation is that digital production and creative development spending is currently underreported. What I’ve observed for years in this business is that when money is needed for production of a digital project that was not budgeted for, clients will regularly pilfer from the largest pie — their broadcast media dollars — because ~$80k here and ~$20k there is hardly missed from a ~$20M+ pie. So my prediction is that marketers will begin to formalize this cannibalization of their broadcast media budgets and this shift will begin to be more accurately reflected in the numbers reported.

2. Apple will enter the search business.

3. MySpace will reemerge as much as a quasi-digital-music-label as a social media network, organizing all its bands’ tracks into a single searchable database with relational recommendations, and become a more serious player in the downloadable digital music business.

4. At the close of 2010 we will still not have an open-standard portable user profile across the major social media platforms. But Facebook Connect will begin to emerge as a default proprietary standard. By 2011/12 Congress will hold hearings on the issue of personal data portability and/or the DOJ will look into whether Facebook merits an investigation for anticompetitive behavior.

5. As content grows, and the demands on our time combined with the failure of search technology to meet our needs, content curation “filters” will emerge as a new form of “search” business model, particularly in niche search categories. Some will be people-driven, some will be algorithm-driven, the best will be a hybrid. This could emerge as a “feature” or “tool” in social media platforms like Facebook.

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Predictions for the decade ahead.

Because we’re at the close of not just a year, but a decade, I decided to throw in another five focusing on society impacting technological change in the coming decade. Making predictions about the future can be hazardous, and more so the further out one looks. I’m wagering that the safest way to make such predictions about the future, short of inventing it yourself, is to extrapolate from existing trends and place some bets on which ones will win out. That is what I’ve employed as methodology. Though they are all outside the realm of my expertise, I have confidence in these predictions primarily because, in some capacity, they all already exist.

1. An amputee athlete that would have previously been a competitor in the paralympics will win Gold in the regular Olympics. Their medal will be contested by other “unenhanced” athletes and cause a crisis of identity of what it means to be “authentically human.” This will become a mass culture meme. There will be a headline grabbing story of a child self-amputating their own arm or leg out of envy for the cool bionic prosthetics. There will be copycats.

2. Upright bi-ped robots will walk among us. There will be a high-profile lawsuit resulting from a death from a malfunctioning robot, without malicious intent (or any sentient intent at all) — will the owner or the manufacturer be held liable, and in what capacity — That will open the legal can-of-worms over the future possibility of a robot deliberately taking a life. Our legal system will be in knots over artificial intelligence, and several generations behind the technology.

3. Late in the decade, video contact lenses will finally be out of the lab and available to consumers (video built into regular eye-frames will, by this point, already be considered a common feature.).

4. By decade’s end, at least 50% of cars on U.S. roads will be electric. Many of the same companies at the helm of the petroleum industry will diversify into other forms of alternative energy production — solar, wind, etc. — but they will no longer be referred to as “alternative” as they will simply be mainstream. You may be recharging your electric car at an Exxon/Mobil station powered by solar.

5. Desalination will grow to become a huge global industry.

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So there you have it. Please feel free to leave your own predictions in the comments.

Augmented Reality

Apple iPhone Apps reports on new iPhone features, attributing credit to an anonymous leak from inside Apple. I would like to focus on one specific feature. They report, with skepticism:

-Revolutionary combination of the camera, GPS, compass, orientation sensor, and Google maps

The camera will work with the GPS, compass, orientation sensor and Google maps to identify what building or location you have taken a picture of. We at first had difficulties believing this ability. However, such a “feature” is technically possible. If the next generation iPhone was to contain a compass then all of the components necessary to determine the actually plane in space for an image taken. The GPS would be used to determine the physical location of the device. The compass would be used to determine the direction the camera was facing. And the orientation sensor would be used to determine the orientation of the camera relative to the gravity. Additionally the focal length and focus of the camera could even assist is determining the distance of any focused objects in the picture. In other words, not only would the device know where you are, but it could determine how you are tilting it and hence it would know EXACTLY where in space your picture was composed. According to our source, Apple will use this information to introduce several groundbreaking features. For example, if you were to take a picture of the Staples Center in Los Angeles, you will be provided with a prompt directing you to information about the building, address, and/or area. This information will include sources such as wikipedia. This seems like quite an amazing service; and a little hard to believe, however while the complexity of such a service may be unrealistic, such is actually feasible with the sensors onboard the next generation iPhone.

And why “unrealistic”? Every piece of this technology already exists in the wild. This is not a great technological leap. This is merely smart convergence.

There are already two applications on the Google Android platform that have these features. One is a proof-of-concept called Enkin, developed by Max Braun and Rafael Spring (students of Computational Visualistics from Coblenz Germany, currently doing robotics research at Osaka University in Japan). The second, Wikitude by Mobilizy, is already in full-blown commercial release (an Austrian company, founded by Philip Breuss-Schneeweis and Martin Lechner).

WIKITUDE DEMONSTRATION:

ENKIN, PROOF-OF-CONCEPT:

It is only one short step further to let users geo-tag their photos. Many social photo/map applications available for the iPhone already incorporate such a feature. Building this into the realtime viewfinder would not be a great challenge. By example, the proof-of-concept for this already exists in the form of Microsoft’s Photosynth (silverlight browser plugin required).

Social Media apps could tap into this utility to network members in real space. At the most basic level, Facebook and/or LinkedIn apps could overlay member’s with their name and profile information.

The next logical extension of this will be to place the information directly into your field of vision.

The OOH marketing opportunities are immense. Recent campaigns for General Electric in the US, and the Mini Cooper in Germany show where this is going. Suddenly the work done by Wayne Piekarski at the University of South Australia’s Wearable Computer Lab is no longer so SciFi (now being commercialized as WorldViz). At January’s CES, Vuzix debuted their new 920AV Model of eyewear, which includes an optional stereoscopic camera attachment to combine virtual objects with your real environment. Originally scheduled for a Spring release, their ship-date has now been pushed back to Fall (their main competitor, MyVu, does not yet have an augmented reality model). If the trend finally takes, expect to see more partnerships with eyewear manufactures.

Initially through the viewfinder of your smartphone, and eventually through the lens of your eyewear, augmentation will be the point of convergence for mobile-web, local-search, social media, and geo-targeted marketing. Whether Apple makes the full leap in one gesture with the release of their Next-Gen iPhone, or gets there in smaller steps depends upon both the authenticity/acuracy of this leak, and the further initiative of third-party software and hardware developers to take advantage of it. Innovation and convergence will be the economic drivers that reboot our economy.

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EDIT: The only capability Apple actually needs to add to the iPhone in order for this proposed augmented reality to be implemented is a magnetometer (digital compass). Google Android models already have this component. Charlie Sorrel of WIRED Magazine’s Gadget Lab has separately reported this feature through leaks of a developer screen shot, and on May 22nd Brian X. Chen, also reporting for WIRED Magazine’s Gadget Lab, put the probability of a magnetometer being included in the new iPhone at 90%. Once the iPhone has an onboard compass, augmented reality features will begin to appear, whether through Apple’s own implementation or from third party developers.

UPDATE: Since the time of this writing, the iPhone 3GS has been released, and it does indeed include an magnetometer.

H+ Magazine

In October Ken Goffman (aka. R.U. Sirius) launched a new venture. The cyberculture icon of Mondo 2000 fame has a new transhumanist magazine, H+. You won’t find this one on your newsstand yet, issue #1 of this quarterly publication has been released as a PDF only. You can download it here (and you should).

Transhumanism is a philosophy that explores/embraces the increasing integration of technology with the human race. In the words of the World Transhumanist Association — “The ethical use of technology to extend human capabilities.” H+ covers these issues technologically, biologically and philosophically — concerned with both the possible, and its implications for humanity.

I had held off covering this on GigantiCo, because I’ve been discussing with Ken a possible role for myself with the publication, and thus far none has precipitated. I had intended to cover the launch of the magazine in a more timely manner, with an announcement of my involvement. So far we are just talking. That’s not a bad thing, I hope the dialog will lead to something more. If it does, readers here will be first to know. Until then, keep an eye on H+.

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EDIT: I am now working with H+. Details to come.

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FURTHER READING:

San Francisco Weekly — Mondo 2000

Boing Boing — Bart Nagel’s Mondo 2000 collection

Coilhouse — Mondo 2000: Where Are they Now?

Temple of the Screaming Electron: A history of Mondo 2000

R.U. Sirius @ Maybe Logic

The R.U. Sirius Show

Contact?

Left to Right: Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes; President Elect, Barack Obama; Alien; Former President, Bill Clinton; Former White House Chief of Staff & co-chair of Barack Obama’s transition team, John Podesta.

It seems UFO/space-alien stories rise to the surface of our popular culture about once a decade. Perhaps we are simply at the crest of this decade’s wave. The new spin is in the number of voices coming from inside the establishment.

In the past year several former NASA Astronauts have come forward to rather adamantly insist that alien spacecraft have visited Earth and various governments have been covering this up. Most outspokenly, Apollo 14 Astronaut, Edgar Mitchell (see video below), and Mercury-Atlas 9 / Gemini 5 Astronaut, C. Gordon Cooper (see video below).

NASA Astronaut, Gordon Cooper		NASA Astronaut, Edgar Mitchell

In May of this year Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, Jesuit director of the Vatican Observatory stated that the existence of extra terrestrial life “doesn’t contradict our faith” in an article for the Vatican paper titled “The extraterrestrial is my brother.” What does the Vatican know? or What is the Vatican preparing itself for?

President Elect, Barack Obama has tapped John Podesta to head his transition team. Podesta, the former Chief of Staff from the Clinton administration, is a known UFO buff. In October, 2002, acting as a lobbyist for the Sci-Fi channel, Podesta held a press conference to announce a freedom of information lawsuit where he stated, “It is time for the government to declassify records that are more than 25 years old and to provide scientists with data that will assist in determining the true nature of the phenomena.” Some dismissed it as a publicity stunt.

But it is worth pointing out that John Podesta was previously a member of Bill Clinton’s administration. Clinton’s Executive Order 12958 declassified many national security related materials including some documents related to UFO investigations (Edit: while blocking others) to satisfy Clinton’s own interest in events like the Roswell incident, and yet no shaking hands with the alien photo-op ever transpired… or did it?

Nuclear Reactor, home edition

The United States’ Los Alamos National Laboratory, in conjunction with private sector partner, Hyperion Power, has announced its first client for their miniature nuclear power reactors— TES of the Czech Republic.

The units will retail for US$25 million each. TES has committed to purchase 6 units (with an option on 12 more) to be delivered by 2013, and Los Alamos/Hyperion claim to have another 100+ orders in the pipeline. They have scaled their manufacturing capacity to deliver 4000 units over tens years.

Led by Dr. Otis Peterson, the reactors are based on a 50 year old design (the TRIGA), of a kind used by science students at University. It is said to be disaster proof (a completely sealed unit, with no moving parts) and nuclear-proliferation proof, as the fuel is Uranium Hydride which has proven ineffective as at being weaponized. Furthermore, the units will be installed underground to avoid tampering. The original patent was granted in 2003, for which Peterson was subsequently honored by the FLC.

Producing 70 megawatts of heat that powers a turbine that generates 25 megawatts of power, they will need refueling once every 7 to 10 years. By example they state that, based on contemporary US residential energy consumption levels, one mini-reactor would be capable of supporting the equivalent of 25,000 homes for five years. At the US$25M price tag, that comes to $200 per home per year.

Though the reactors were originally conceived for use by large industrial projects located off the power grid, Hyperion has adjusted their sales focus, after intense interest from remote communities including developers in the Bahamas and the Cayman Islands.

Recent growth in international energy demands coupled with concerns over global climate change have renewed interest in nuclear energy, which has the lowest Carbon emissions factor of any known form of energy production.

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FURTHER READING:

Hyperion: Nuclear In A Box

Micro-nuclear plants for local power

Hyperion Nuclear Batteries

Future by Design

Documentary filmmaker, Emmy Award winning, and Academy Award nominated director William Gazecki has made this homage to Jacque Fresco, self taught architect, engineer, inventor and futurist.

About six months ago I ordered my DVD of the independent film, Future by Design. This weekend I finally got around to watching it.

The film is made from a montage of footage- a contemporary interview with Jacque, Jacque in a 1974 interview with then local Miami talk show host Larry King, a geriatric tour group walking the compound of Jacque’s Venus Project, and a combination of computer rendered and stop action modeled footage of his urban planning proposals, and other architectural concepts.

The renders, drawings and especially the models are of greatest interest. Through these one can see the incredible investment in time and thought Jacque has put into his grand design. The heartfelt craftsmanship of the true believer.

The future is not what it use to be.

The problem with most visions of the future is that they usually tell us more about the era that they came from, than they do about what will follow.

More so than any real or likely future, this story tells us of a future that exists only in the mind of Jacque Fresco. Jacque is a Utopianist. Though he doesn’t see it, his vision of the future is a uniquely mid-century Western future. A utopian vision of a centrally planned, state run society. Though I’m glad not to live in Jacque’s vision for the future, I do find it just as fascinating as it is improbable.

My grumble with most who drink from this futurist fountain is the shortsightedness of envisioning a future that has no past. Let’s discount for a moment that there would be no jobs for architects or designers in Jacque’s future, because he’s already designed it all, there are also no designers or architects in Jacque’s past, because his future vision exists within a metaphorical bubble (and sometimes within a literal one).

Any real future exists as a layer on top of both the recent and distant past, and they must coexist. On a trip to modern day Rome you will find contemporary modern architecture built near post war monuments, beside Rococo structures adjacent to their Baroque forebears, surrounded by Renaissance masterpieces, built among the ruins of Roman temples. The evolution of human civilization is embodied in the architectural edifices that we live among, and build upon, both literally and figuratively. In fact, here in New York and elsewhere in high density urban areas, developers and conservationist have recently found common ground— rather than demolition before new construction, new buildings are being built above and around existing older structures. The trend has become so fashionable in New York, that this new form of reuse is sometime employed as an aesthetic unto itself, even when conservation doesn’t call for it.

Jacque Fresco, eccentric enough to be endearing, has made a living out of doing his own thing and pursuing his passions. Anyone who has so uncompromisingly followed their own vision should be respected, admired and even celebrated. The movie might not convince you of Jacque’s vision of the future, and to Gazecki’s credit I don’t think that was the movie’s intention, but it does let you step inside the mind of Fresco, and see one possible world through his mind’s eye. Until somebody builds a Venus Project based metaverse, this film will be the closest we’ll ever get to seeing the world of Jacque’s vision. It is a film worth watching, and William Gazecki should be thanked for documenting the life and ideas of this unique individual.

LETTER FROM THE DIRECTOR:

Hi Chris-

I just wanted to compliment and thank you for your thoughtful commentary on “Future by Design”.

You’re one of the very few people who “got it right” as to how and why the film was made, and what value it is meant to impart.

We’re having a pretty good time getting it out there- kids seem to appreciate it the most. I had one schoolteacher tell me it was “the first positive outlook on the future some of these kids have ever had”, which was nice to hear. No, Jacque’s vision of the world as he would like it to be is not likely to occur- but at least he tried, and in the process came up with some useful ideas. He’s learned a lot, too- mostly about human behavior, and how much it can change.

Thanks again,
William Gazecki