2022: The Year of Storytelling and Hope
Two ideas from 2021 that are worth remembering going into 2022.
'To be born again,' sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, 'first you have to die. Ho ji! Ho ji! To land upon the bosomy earth, first one needs to fly.
- The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie
I want to leave 2021 with talking about two ideas that have been on my mind and, I think, affected me most profoundly this year. ARGs and Conspiracies.
Augmented Reality Games
Adrian Hon created Zombies Run, an audio-based augmented reality running app and, in some ways, proved that the storytelling will make you exercise.
VR couldn’t fix the exercise problem no matter how many imaginary boxes you could slice though to the beat of your favourite song. However, audio-based AR on the other hand.
The idea here is that if stoytelling can make you pay to sweat, why not everything else. As human beings we’re clearly addicted to identifying patterns and repeating rewarded behavior. Storytelling is exactly that. It’s a way to take the mundane aspects of the world and turn them into an alternate-reality where you’re doing things ‘for a reason’.
Lives seem to be devoid of reason or purpose. I don’t know why. Maybe it just is hard to hold onto in the face of the banality of existence and all that.
The Metaverse is coming. AR is already here and VR is wherever you parked your car and forgot. The tech exists, the algorithmic protocolization needs some wire-crossing and all we’ll need then is the story. But not trapped in books and images, instead freed into simulation of all that we know. Life, if this works, will never be the same again. I intend to be a part of making that happen.
Conspiracy Theories
The article itself talks about Qanon. However, in India we too have a fundamentalist, conservative politic that employs radicalisation of the middle-class through very similar tactics and similar messaging. Adrian Hon builds on the argument that tumbling down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories like Qanon are part of what gets them to stick.
My interest here is in the power of ‘the conspiracy’ as a story. But with very real implications. The negative implications and violence, however, is what the technique of conspiracy does in the hands of nefarious storytellers. The power must be boiled down to means and ways and redeployed.
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." - Albert Einstein
I would agree with Einstein except that the persistence of reality in the world of today simply can’t be taken for granted. The panacea to conspiracy is not history in my opinion. Reality is what balkanized groups of people on screens invite others to agree upon and then fight when they disagree.
Where is the conspiracy for the world being a beautiful place? Where is the conspiracy that inspires decency and a return to co-operative values? We must write that conspiracy and infect the hearts and minds of people. Or perish in a hateful pile of gelatinous gunk.
I’m going to let 2021 pass with but a whimper. I can list down the things that happened, went right, wrong, up and down. However, I can also just let it go.
There are positions to take, ideas to offer, research to clarify and money to be made and I have nothing to do with any of them for now. They’ll be 2022 Terence’s problem.
Mostly I think 2021 Terence is going to treat the last few days of 2021 like the world’s ending. Maybe, if he’s lucky, it will.
I will, however, leave you with a banner image for this blog that was never used and will die in 2021. 2022 needs a better aesthetic and more consistent, better quality posts.
I might even leave substack entirely for my own website. Who knows…
Give me hope…
Give me hope Juanna…’till the morning comes…
Give me hope!