Liberation of the Netherlands of Nazi occupiers, May 5th, 1945

Our freedom is being taken away and we dare to tell ourselves its in our own best interest. I will tell you this; fuck you. Because for what? For a few hundred thousand old, unhealthy westerners that were about to die anyway (look at the numbers). This has been over a period of 4 months. On average normally 70 thousand people die EVERY day. So numbers are incredibly skewed and our response is a purely emotional one. I mean, which numbers represent what? Think. UN estimates that hundreds of thousands of kids will die due to the forced lockdown of the GLOBAL economy. But not of the virus. You read that right.

But as we learned to not deal with the facts anymore in recent debates, driven by anti-scientific propositions like ‘men are not different from women’, we ended up not knowing how to deal with facts anymore when we needed to most. So what do we do? Instead of basing our decisions on facts we base them on emotions. And what is the predominant emotion regarding this virus? Its fear. Fear of death. It is our biggest and only fear where all of our other fears derive from. When we left God during the enlightenment we decided it was a good time for us to become God. Except unlike god, we die. Its a human feature (not a bug as is proposed by the transhumanist movement).

Having killed god and not having come to terms with death has created a selfish and often meaningless species. Living from desire to desire. But as Steve Jobs said; ‘Death very likely is the single best invention of life. Its life’s change agent. It clears out the old and makes way for the new.’ Death is part of the duality we love to live in so much. Dark and light. Us and them. Good and bad. Death is part of the ying and yang of life and i think its time for us, now more than ever, to look inwards and confront that fear. Because that is what makes us human. Who knows what comes after. Who cares. Now is all there is. Right now we are willing to kill millions and millions that will follow from the economic downturn triggered by the lockdown.

‘That would mean an additional 130 million people were “living on the edge of starvation,” largely due to the economic impact of the coronavirus crisis, with wages, supply chains and humanitarian aid under pressure as a result of the outbreak.’

(UN’s World Food Programme)

All because of the final realization that we never controlled anything, and that death comes for us all. So we try control whatever is left. But at what price. That is our choice and its how we will end up living in a dystopian society, robbed of what makes us human. Our freedom. We are about to wake up in a society where you will be bought of with a monthly handout, just enough to sustain yourself. In exchange you’ll only have to abide by the rules of the social credit system, agree to being tracked and monitored constantly and give up on your privacy and individual rights. Welcome to the end of freedom. This is what we are choosing voluntarily by not rebelling against it. What world do we want to wake up in a year from now? Or five years from now? What kind of world do want to leave our kids with? Yesterday was the 5th of may, in Holland we commemorate the liberation of the nazi oppression during the second world war. Makes me wonder, do we still remember what freedom means? Does it have enough meaning for us to fight for it? Or does it have to be taken away first? To end with a quote from the famous Dylan Thomas poem; ‘Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light’.

Listen to the ‘Don’t look away’ podcast on Spotify;

https://open.spotify.com/show/0vq3pil3WfNGgLEM1kuhej?si=I2L8QlQISvKsadHKWkKTdA

Follow the ‘Don’t look away’ blog;

https://dontlookaway.substack.com

Sources:

The impact of Covid-19 on children:

https://unsdg.un.org/sites/default/files/2020-04/160420_Covid_Children_Policy_Brief.pdf

Biblical’ famines could double global hunger as a result of the coronavirus crisis, UN warns:

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/22/coronavirus-biblical-famines-could-double-global-hunger-un-warns.html

The generation that grew up after 2000..
What does that say exactly? Well, I have generally noticed and personally experienced a deep urge to do better. Resulting from our understanding and knowledge of what is possible. At first enabled, and later emphasized, by both globalization and digitalization. An endless stream of information is available to nearly everyone, instantly and at all times, basically equalizing chances for humanity.

So how do we cope with this phenomenon? How do different generations cope with it? On the one side — the side of people who reached adulthood before the 2000s and never knew any better — fear seems to get the upper hand. They are in fear of losing what is familiar and what has been known to be for such a long time. The status quo. Existing systems, customs and opinions, rooted in practices that gained traction decades ago but do not match modern technological developments and innovative approaches. And at the same time, they do not realize how bad the influence and the effect of ‘what is known’ has been for a long time. Therefore, this generation is not able to change the status quo and to act upon potentially disruptive developments.

But now, there is all this available information out there. And there is this generation, known as the millennials, that knows how to act upon that information. And, last but not least, there are these new technologies that give humanity the tools to do better on a growing and broader scale. Strangely enough, it’s mostly social media that enables this. When it comes to information, everything can be made instantly available for everyone to see and to act upon, creating urgency and relevancy, becoming politicized and agendized almost immediately by brands and businesses who fear losing clients, customers or voters, or who fear fueling (digital) uprise. And make no mistake, uprise means the uprise of the masses. Globalized. Which means that subjects become politicized by demand of those same masses, not by politics, media or other powerful institutions. From Anonymous to Black Lives Matter to the #MeToo movement. Their impact reflects directly on society as a whole.

So what is happening, not due to but at least enabled by technology, is that the demand side is incentivized and enabled to speak out and to speak up. Without limitations. At first, we talked mostly about pictures of cats and dogs… But the bigger the following, the more pressing matters are being communicated from the understanding that humanity has to do better as a whole.

We’re back in Colombia, where I took a domestic flight from Medellín to Santa Marta. I was reading a book when a girl sitting next to me on the other side of the isle asked me to show her what I was reading. I gave her the book and we started having this amazing conversation. We talked about many things; connecting with strangers, the beauty of travelling and the importance of curiosity. Basically about not being afraid to live.

We had been talking for about an hour when the plain started landing. The landing didn’t go as planned. The captain had to perform an emergency intervention and had to pull up the airplane meters from the ground. Every imaginable form of energy was sucked out of the passenger cabin. Only fear was left. Except for us, strangely enough. We kept talking as if keeping the connection between us alive was the only thing that mattered. It felt like we became the centre of the universe. And somehow I instantly knew that this was destiny presenting itself, experienced through this radiating force of cosmic energy. I don’t know how to describe it, but I just knew something amazing was happening.

That sense proved to be true, since I’m sitting in her family’s house right now. Writing. A two hour drive from Mexico city. The sun is slowly rising in the open window behind me, warming the Mexican highland. The sound of singing birds fills the air, while the feeling of pure wonder remains alive within me.

What happened before

Back in September, a disastrous earthquake hit Mexico City. I immediately asked Maria if she was okay. She was. We talked for a while, and I asked her if she was willing to gather information regarding the help that was being provided and allocated by the local government in the direct aftermath of the earthquake. She responded that she and her family had been directly involved in providing first aid and primary necessities, and that they were helping to clean up the mess left by the earthquake. So, I told her that I was working on this idea that involves a more direct approach of providing charity, cutting out unnecessary middlemen like governments and NGOs, and that I could really use her help as a local source and base of first hand knowledge. She wholeheartedly agreed to help and sent me pictures of the affected areas, which showed houses and buildings in ruins. As a side note she mentioned that the government was working harder on upholding the devastating image towards the rest of world in order to attract large donations, than on actually actively helping the victims. I still didn’t know exactly what to do with this shocking information in a detailed level, but just like everything up until then, I trusted it would work out by following my gut feeling.

And so I did. Not in the most subtle way, I have to say. I made a mess of it, on a personal level. But I knew I had to give up the safety nets in my life, because only in complete personal freedom I knew I would be able to create something lasting with a potentially transforming impact on humanity. Reflecting on what I would have to give up if I wanted this to succeed was a humbling lesson for me. In every aspect of my life. So I gave up. On almost everything. My relationship ended within the next month. I quit my job. I got into a heartbreaking fight with my dad. These confrontations were painful but they were needed to become truly free from expectations of others.

A wise man told me I had to manifest this idea into reality by myself. So I rented out my house and booked a ticket to Mexico. Weeks before my flight was scheduled, I was chatting with Maria. And then she sent me the most heartbreaking and amazing voice message ever. She told me that she and her family were willing to pick me up as soon as I would land and that I could stay with them as long as I wanted, that I’d be their guest and that they would take care of me. Maria offered to take me to the epicentre of the earthquake to visit the places where locals had been living on the streets and were now trying to build camps on the remnants of their own houses. She also offered to translate and to help me get in touch with the right people. I actually shared this voice message with a lot of people. To inspire them. And it still fills me with pride for humanity everytime I hear it. It’s a message filled with kindness and the gift of pure hospitality. Nothing asked in return. I will try to share it sometime in the future. It brought me to tears. As did many thing since I broke up with my ex haha.

But what this all points out to me, is that sometimes a chain of events is so hard to comprehend that the actual chance of them happening are mathematically zero. So we can only marvel, left in awe and sheer amazement of the workings of the universe. Our human arrogance makes us try to explain anything and everything. This has hurt humanity.

We love control. But control kills. Imagination. Spontaneity. Curiosity. And, maybe even more so, the wonder of life ‘happening’. All we have to do is play along. But we make it so hard for ourselves and the world around us. We value the wrong things and forget to appreciate true beauty, so often. While all we have to do is just dance to the rhythm of the universe. Surf on its waves.

A few days ago Maria and her family picked me up at the hotel where I was staying the first night after my flight into Mexico. We had breakfast together. Afterwards, we headed out to visit some of the spots where victims of the earthquake were left to their own fate, under distressing conditions, after false promises of the government.

To be continued...

Part 2: Where it all began was originally published in Journey to gaia on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In the summer of ’17 I travelled through Colombia, parts of Panama (mostly the islands in front of the coast) and Peru. Anne, my ex girlfriend, joined me after I had been backpacking through Colombia on my own for two weeks. Together we visited some of the beaches adjacent to the Caribbean Sea and the city of Cartagena, then moved west to visit the San Blas islands neighbouring the coast of Panama. A small island state, home to indigenous people and offered to them after they had been chased away from the mainland of Panama. Sadly, these islands are rapidly disappearing. When we arrived, we were welcomed to stay with the locals, experience their culture, eat their food and sleep at their places.

I think it was our second day there when we visited a smaller, but absolutely stunning island. No one actually lived there. We were with a group of people and I started talking with this guy who had been travelling the world for over three years. Coming from Germany originally, he had this kinda weird hobby making middle age swords. He basically was a blacksmith living in the 21st century. He was quite a character. The point is that he had been travelling near Nepal, back in 2015, when a major earthquake had hit. So, he decided to go see if he could be of any assistance. Once he got there, he joined a group of backpackers to see the effects of the earthquake first hand, and investigate how they could be of help.

What they encountered left them shocked: a country shattered and turned to complete ruins, while big NGOs such as the Red Cross would fly in Boeing 747s with lawyers, accountants and the whole shebang of Western ‘double-left-handed-help’. Unprepared to temporarily do away with the luxury they were accustomed to, staying in 5-star hotels and only getting out for a limited amount of hours per day. So, this German guy and the group of backpackers started working together with locals to come up with a suitable approach to offer the necessary help. After a few days of indicating the effects and having a general idea of what was needed, they started helping in their own way: by closely cooperating with locals instead of forcing a foreign, bombastic approach with little or even damaging results.

As luck would have it, one of the backpackers was an architect and another had been working in construction for years. They ended up being this wonderful, mixed group of people from all over the world, with different backgrounds and expertise; bundled together with local knowledge. In this composition, they were able to build over 200 houses in a period of only three weeks. Sustainable, and in a very cost-effective way by constantly communicating and working together with locals. They discovered that uniting the right efforts can create a new sort of organism; so that humanity can become more than the sum of its cultures.

The effort of NGOs to build only a fraction of the residences that had been built by the mixed group of backpackers, sometimes will take up over two months. For a fraction of the price, these backpackers pulled it off to create housing that is more sustainable, and better adjusted to local conditions, than most NGOs could ever have created. NGOs normally ‘plant’ format housing that only lasts approximately two years, while the houses of the joint effort of the locals and backpackers were built following local conditions and requirements, effectively combining Western expertise with local knowledge of material and contextual and cultural conditions.

That was the moment it hit me. If all this can be accomplished by a group of backpackers and locals through passionate cooperation based on personal skillsets and the availability of resources, how much more effective would humanitarian aid be if there was a transparent platform facilitating just this: p2p charity in a combined effort of locals and travellers who are willing to cooporate in order to help humanity.

Personally, I’m a strong believer in the inevitability of technology, hence my deep appreciation and passion for blockchain technology: guaranteeing full transparency and accuracy of the gift, while taking away the unnecessary friction (middleman). Keeping the sole purpose of charity alive while deinstitutionalizing the industry and taking away superfluous noise.

So, I started making rounds on that beautiful 100x50m big island, my brain on fire, making notes while rapidly working out a framework in which blockchain would fit as a means of making charity not only locally available and much more effective, but also efficient and fully transparent by tracking microfunding and making Western resources available to projects in different parts of the world on the smallest of scales.

To be continued..

Part 1: How technology is destined to radically transform charity was originally published in Journey to gaia on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“Money is dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge’s name was good upon ‘Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Money was as dead as a door-nail.”

Some of you might recognize the above as the start of ‘A Christmas Carol’, by the late Charles Dickens. And except for the word ‘Money” (which needs to be Marley), it is analogous to the story we’re about to tell. The story about money as we know it and the role it has played throughout history. Money might be on the brink of death, and that might be entirely Scrooge’s fault 😈

To start off.. 🚀

It has been a very vibrating year for all us working in technology. As it always is of course 😏. Every year there’s new stuff to get excited about when you’re working in an industry that is moving at an increasingly rapid pace. But this year was maybe sort of different. For some (the ones old enough), it felt like the early years of the internet. And that has everything to do with Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin. The technology enabling Bitcoin; blockchain, has even been called the decentralized successor of the internet itself.

So everybody probably has heard of Bitcoin by now. In the news. The media. You know. And everybody seems to be having an opinion about it. Is it a good thing or is it bad you might wonder? And why is this happening right now? How much revolves around bubble-forming and how much is actually stone-cold science? All are probably true in some way or another. But that immediately shows the complexity involved with the rise of digital currencies; the first being Bitcoin.

That is because cryptocurrencies mean so much more, not just in value, but in societal meaning as well. It amplifies the sentiment of wanting to take back control of something we feel we’ve lost as a society. With digitization and globalization, it was supposed to get all better. But people often feel like they’ve been lied to and that they’ve been cheated out of; both their trust ánd their money. And lately, money reveals itself more and more as a collective illusion at scale. Only being upheld because we have to accept the value of it, forced upon us by governments, central banks and the toxic cocktail they form together; politics.

So why have we accepted the status quo as it is for so long? Allowing regulators to scheme us out of our money by dishonest and forced upon ruling, inflation techniques to devaluate our hard earned money and other ways to rob us of our incomes through tax rulings with the goal to save the fraudulent institutions that brought us the 2008 crisis 🏦. So why haven’t we stood up?

Inflation 🤹

The simple answer is: because there was no alternative. Up until now. As one of the earliest members of the Bitcoin community Nick Szabo (Google him; promise you he’ll be worth your time) puts it: ‘’All money mankind has ever used has been insecure in one way or another. This insecurity has been manifested in a wide variety of ways, from counterfeiting to theft, but the most pernicious of which is probably been inflation.’’ Something we can all agree on is that it’s not really the Christmas spirit.

Still, this lawful theft has been going on for hundreds of years and only until recently, the grand scheme to push us out of our money by just printing more and more, seems to have stopped working. Very sad indeed. Luckily this story has an alternative and possibly even happy ending for us; the people. Because first of all, inflation will never happen to Bitcoin as Satoshi Nakamoto (its famous inventor), ruled out inflation by capping the supply on 21 million Bitcoins to be in circulation around 2040. There no extra printing by central governments or anyone else after that. And it’s just the stuff like this that what makes the case for Bitcoin so incredibly strong.

So what actually is Bitcoin and the famous blockchain technology behind it?

Bitcoin is a cryptographically secure digital currency, enabled by blockchain technology. It’s a store of value and is seen as the digital gold for Millennials. A generation particularly mistrusting towards financial institution as they directly experienced the negative consequences growing up during the financial crisis. The Blockchain element though is the real revolutionary part of Bitcoin. Blockchain is a decentralized distributed database allowing parties to trust each other without the necessity for involving a powerful intermediary to establish that trust.

It’s a direct threat to a bank’s right of existence and that same goes for all other industries where middlemen are a necessary means to provide trust. They are simply no longer needed with Blockchain, that trust is stored in a decentralized ledger, encrypted with complex mathematics, so-called hash codes. The ledger is not controlled by any single person or organization (hence decentralized), but at the same time accessible by everyone giving the whole network access to all the information and transactions ever stored on the ever growing chain of blocks.

What goes around… 🌚

So what does this Blockchain technology mean for you and me in a practical sense? Well, the technology itself is first and foremost about taking away friction. Banks, to use the same example, are a typical form of friction. Because they guarantee the trust necessary for the two parties exchanging money. Blockchain cuts away that middleman, establishing trust through cryptography, hence the term cryptocurrency. Banks and other financial institutions never really cared about the intrinsic concept of trust in the first place, as they were mostly busy enriching themselves over taxpayers backs, that now comes back to haunt them.

People remember the crisis caused by big banking and their insatiable greed, especially that moment when the crisis lead to bailing out the big banks with the money of taxpayers. Without their consent. To save the banks responsible for the crisis. While banks and financial institutions where maximizing profits, in parallel, they were minimizing our trust in them. It almost seems like a perfect circle. What goes around comes around. It’s also called karma 😃.

So back to the bitcoin 🔮

For who has been following the cryptocurrency lately; Bitcoin has steadily been pushing its valuation and price higher and higher at an increasingly rapid pace. And we believe the price will continue to rise over the long term, like the waterbed effect. Slowly we’ll make more and more money flows from financial markets into Bitcoin (and other cryptocurrencies), generating a network effect among traditional money owners, increasing the stream of value flowing into Bitcoin, even more, driving up prices further and slowly devaluating good old fiat money controlled by governments, banks, and central banks.

And there won’t be any going back. More cryptocurrencies will thrive on the waves made by Bitcoin. And of course, making a quick win on the short term is tempting because right now it’s basically Christmas for everyone. But when we are looking at the price of Bitcoin in the short term, and are calculating how much money you can make over a very insecure short term of time; you are definitely missing the point. Bitcoin is not what it represents in terms of money. That’s a hard one to wrap your head around because our brains and thought-patterns are hardwired in Keynesian thinking and old economic models. But it’s a good start to see Bitcoin as one of the many successors of money. Not controlled by anyone, and thus a far safer store of value than money ever will be.

So here is Bitcoin 🥂

Your digital gold. Offering you a safe decentralized place for your assets. Enabling you to be free from whatever trickery banks and governments have in there high capitalistic hats. You can be safe, as the Blockchain technology behind it is mathematically proven with zero fault margins. It’s also why there still is a lot of negative news around Bitcoin being a bubble. It’s coming from the PR machinery of governments and banks rapidly losing their power. They had us locked in in their own carefully manufactured bubble. And of course they want to keep us in. It’s their raison d’être. But their financial dome is about to burst. It’s over with their little Truman show as we, the main character, are about to escape their Scroogy, money grabbing fingers.

And that will lift humanity as a whole as it enables us to take measures into our own hands ones again. Not just for us, but also for people in developing countries, as they mostly didn’t have access to financial services (but that’s another long story). From a technological perspective we all become equal, as we’ll all have access to the same services. It’s what makes Bitcoin kinda like a Christmas gift for humanity. It has the promise of a newborn child. A child saving us from the tyranny of central governments and bankers. Technologies’ Christmas gift to the world.

Merry Christmas! 🎅🎄

It’s not exactly, entirely new. Augmented Reality. Some of us have been playing with it for quite a while. Pokemon-Go. Snapchat. Even Facebook and everybody’s favorite ‘girl-next-door’; Instagram have been part of the game. Although those two have only reached that point because of very obvious copycat behavior (Snapchat). But, with the launch of Apple’s AR-kit the market has officially opened up to the ‘grown-ups’.

And that’s good news. Or should be. Take the sports industry for example. And maybe even more specific; football. Boy, do they need innovation. There’s no cry as loud as the cry for new technologies within the football industry. They don’t seem to move until death is upon them. Even if all the numbers are stacked up against them, they steady continue towards extinction. Like a bunch of dodo’s. Well, that goes a bit far. It’s not just the football industry. It’s actually exemplary for almost any other industry out there. But then again; that’s another story. Or more of a book actually. So we are talking about an industry that is in desperate need for change as viewing numbers are in decline, while at the same time generations turns their back on old ways of experiencing sports. While at the same time there’s too much at stake to just change the old ways; sponsor deals, television rights, huge corporate and business incentives etc.

Then there’s this old model where the business is leaning on to; they buy rights, fans buy a shirt, a ticket to a game and watch a game on the telly every now and then. That’s obviously more then than now. But that model can only work when content providers are supported in their view that their content is actually consumed. Otherwise, they’ll have to explain so much towards all those greedy advertisers, who are locating their budgets elsewhere, more lucrative anyway (read: social). But that’s again, another story.

So what about AR?

Back to the importance of new technologies like augmented reality. The youth is viewing sports less and less. And yes, sports as a category is being viewed way less as well. The youth are mostly active in gaming, esports, a bit of Snapchatting, Instagram and the likes. And yes, Facebook indeed has already been taken over by the old. Things move fast!

In short, if want to remain relevant in any way you shall have to move along. Speed up and be dynamic, like the youth is. No big plans or grand visions. But easy to implement, engaging solutions to be able to embrace the fast-moving landscape of the viewer and future fan. And leave behind the old legacy in the process, as much as possible, while at the same time minimizing new.

Nobody has the patience for more far-fetched views or impossible vision. Don’t think four years ahead, but 4 months. And start building straight away.

Especially when it comes to interacting with the youth. Old people tend to die earlier than the young. That’s kind of a given. So the last group is where your focus should be. This group doesn’t care what you believe in or how you’d like to make money. You have to prove your relevance, by offering experiences that can be applied to their perception of the world. And I believe Augmented Reality (AR) could be a fundamental technology in a strategy to re-engage the youth. In another article, I once wrote an for a different medium, I pointed out the importance of taking note of playing youth so that we don’t miss out on new trends like AR. Because now that AR is here, as an industry we seem impassive as don’t know what to do with it.

What follows next is that our world is so fundamentally shaken that entire business models become obsolete before we can even start to anticipate. And that is sort of sad.

For AR this has been truth for the most part. Due to Pokemon Go a little less. But now that it’s here, we barely thought of new applications or of the technology.

I mean, yes there are new players out there, already attracting the young. One-football for example, lets you augment the match selection, directly into your ‘physical’ surroundings. With the Dutch company Beyond Sports it’s the same story. They’ve been on top of their game since they showed a demo within they visualized a real match between Ajax and PSV, displayed in AR, straight on your kitchen table (by means of the Hololens). Following that. FOX Sports now offers (in collaboration with the same Beyond Sports), an application for viewers at home where they can watch football highlights in Virtual Reality. These are some great steps on a promising path. But when it comes to engagement, all the traditional players are missing the strategic link with the younger audience. Because once again, they’re famous for not paying for content. The average sixteen-year-old doesn’t have a FOX Sports subscription and lag’s both incentive and financial means to get one. So they don’t get to see all the exciting content behind the paywall

So what about outside the football industry? You might wonder. There are some AR things happening within the sports industry in general. But it’s not much yet. NFL is supposedly experimenting with Apple’s AR kit and has already been offering AR during live games. And then, of course, there’s all the smaller stuff. But nothing fundamental. Yet.

But within the football industry, there’s nothing but loud silence. While today’s kids continue to play FIFA. And EA is making money with FIFA. Quite a bit actually. They made over billion dollars just by selling content. The actual amount of games that have been sold is not even counted within those numbers. And of course, it’s not nearly enough to make up for the giant losses that would come from losing television incomes. It’s purely digital. There’s literally zero distribution costs.

It’s just, how could you broaden your mind and see a better future where worlds merge. For example, by offering live AR where you see a players FIFA stats, layered over a real football game.

Because the question is, what now?

I don’t know. I don’t know how much an industry with so much legacy is willing to change. If they want to make a chance as an industry, they should join forces with players outside their field. For example FIFA, Playstation, Oculus. Bundle new technology with the experience of a live game and come up with relevant solutions that fit into the world of perception of younger target groups.

My goal was, after a broad introduction, to create a somewhat hopeful scenario. But as I continued writing, I didn’t find very much hope left. Because I’d love to paint you a scenario where within technologies such as AR and VR play a large role in sports and where the old industry can keep its seat as well. But I think the words of the late Steve Jobs can be applied here; “death is the change agent of life. The old simply has to die to make way for the young and the new.” The rise of esports, FIFA as a much broader percepted game among young then we can imagine. They don’t care about watching lengthy and mostly boring games when they can do the same with their friends while interacting with their favorite players and build the dream team they crave.

And of course it’s possible that with another drop in viewership, big execs are left almost empty handed and the industry takes to measure. Simply because it will be the only card they have left. They probably need some young daring talents from the technology sector to apply the magic. But it thinks it’s already too late. Because everything is moving faster constantly. The past as a factor plays a too large role in our view the future. The industry is in reverse while driving forward. It’s a matter of time before that leads to a major accident.

This article was originally written for SPORTNEXT.nl

Augmented… What? was originally published in TripleUniverse on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Een toekomst gebaseerd op algemene verwachtingen en een stukje beroepsdeformatie. We willen zo graag dat AR slaagt, daar waar het vanuit ons perspectief de meeste potentie biedt. Vanuit die redenatie kijken we structureel naar sectoren als de gezondheidszorg, het onderwijs en ‘the office of the future’. Maar doordat wij ons zo sterk focussen op de wenselijke toepassingen, zien we de praktische toepassingen over het hoofd. Een daarvan is entertainment.

De opmars naar structureel gebruik van AR is er namelijk al, maar bevindt zich in de onverwachte hoek. Want hoewel we roepen dat de jeugd de toekomst heeft, doen we met dat gegeven vaak veel te weinig. We realiseren ons onvoldoende dat juist de jeugd bepalend is voor de houdbaarheid van onze businessmodellen in de toekomst.

Uit onverwachte hoek

Laten we even aannemen dat als we het over AR hebben er wat belletjes gaan rinkelen. We zijn over het algemeen bekend met de Google Glass, Microsoft HoloLens, Facebook (en wat zij met AR doen) en wellicht Magic Leap. De eerste twee zijn relevant en de laatste twee zeker interessant. Maar de belangrijkste in het rijtje ontbreekt: Snapchat. Als het over Snapchat gaat schudden velen van ons meewarig met het hoofd terwijl de rest zijn schouders ophaalt. Maar dat grotendeels onbegrip. Want hoewel wij onszelf vaak open en adaptable vinden, zijn we dat in de praktijk veel te weinig.

We kijken vaak met een scheef gezicht naar de jeugd en de trends die zij omarmen, in plaats van dat we begrip tonen en op zoek gaan naar participatiemogelijkheden. Wij denken niet in nieuwe markten of volledig nieuwe producten. Ons denken wordt gevoed vanuit verwachtingen en aangevuld met lineaire ontwikkelingen die zich logischerwijs voltrekken vanuit een menselijke perspectief. Hierdoor houden we echter veel te weinig rekening met de constante versnelling waar we ons in bevinden. Want terwijl de traditionele instellingen van deze wereld lijvige rapporten schrijven over de ontwikkelingsstatus van AR, liggen de feiten bijna voor het oprapen. Mits je goed kijkt. Én naar de juiste doelgroep, dat wel.

Snapchat

Snapchat. Ook wel het sprookje van de westkust genoemd. In Nederland heeft het sociale entertainmentplatform inmiddels meer dan 2,5 miljoen gebruikers. Het bedrijf deed onlangs een officieel verzoek tot IPO (initial public offering), en is volgens beursanalisten daarmee in potentie de meest waardevolle beursgang sinds Facebook. Maar wat is Snapchat, hoe is het bedrijf relevant en waarom moeten wij op het bedrijf letten?

Die vraag is inherent aan de stelling dat het bedrijf momenteel een zeer belangrijke rol speelt in het mainstream worden van AR, en de gevolgen die dit heeft voor hoe wij interacteren met de digitale wereld in een bredere context. Want hoewel Snapchat aan de oppervlakte misschien niet veel meer lijkt dan een tool die ons faciliteert in onze eindeloze drang naar constante zelfverheerlijking, getuigt een dergelijke aanname ook van een gebrek aan visie.

We gaan dan te gemakkelijk voorbij aan het onmiskenbare momentum waarop het bedrijf opereert, de unieke propositie die Snapchat gebruikers biedt en de enorm waardevolle customer feedback circle die het bedrijf heeft gecreëerd. Maar voordat we het hebben over AR als mainstream toepassing en de kansen die dit biedt met betrekking tot het creëren van een user-generated-interface, is het interessant om eerst even stilstaan bij de meest gehypte olifant in de kamer: Magic Leap. Overigens vooral om te kijken hoe het niet moet.

Magic Leap

De potentie van AR werd tot voor kort suggestief gevormd door de berichtgeving rondom Magic Leap. De mixed reality toepassing van Magic Leap suggereert een wereld waarin schermen niet langer een beperkende factor vormen voor onze onderlinge communicatie. Magic Leap schetst een wereld waarin interactie met elkaar, de wereld om ons heen en onze digitale context naadloos overvloeien om zo een perfecte nieuwe realiteit te creëren. Die revolutie zou het intermenselijke contact weer terugbrengen naar de essentie, onderwijl onze toegang tot de digitale wereld eindeloos verrijkend. Een waar sprookje. Was het niet dat Magic Leap nooit één gebruiker had?

Het sprookje bleek dan ook te mooi om waar te zijn en grotendeels te berusten op een hoax. Volgens berichtgeving lopen de investereringen in het bedrijf op tot ver over de miljard dollar (onder andere Google en Alibaba investeerden). Het leverde de investeerders niet meer op dan wat extern ingekochte visuele fantasieën, berustend op de wankelende illusie van hoop. Een wonderschone illusie. Zo’n illusie waar wij gezamenlijk maar wat graag in geloofden. Zo gaat dat vaak met sprookjes. Totdat we geconfronteerd worden met de realiteit. Maar ondanks dat we illusie armer zijn is de potentie niet minder groot. En zo komen we terug bij Snapchat.

Snapchat en de CPU van de toekomst

Snapchat biedt een relatief jong publiek een platform waarop zij (vrij van vorm en inhoud), hun verhalen kunnen vertellen, verrijken en delen. Snapchat is tamelijk uniek door gebruikers een interface te bieden met een sterke focus op AR. De interface moedigt de gebruiker aan tot het ‘augmenten’ van zichzelf en van de hun directe omgeving. Dit doet het bedrijf door wisselende tools, software, emoji’s, berichtjes, video’s en maskers te bieden, gecreëerd met behulp van zeer specifieke facial en context recognition software.

Gebruik van Snapchat vindt in de eerste instantie plaats in de context van sociaal entertainment, gedreven door nieuwsgierigheid naar het nieuwe platform. Maar Snapchat creëert met deze brede toepassing van AR een volledig nieuwe markt met een zeer unieke wisselwerking tussen vraag- en aanbodzijde. Gebruikers creëren met Snapchat onbewust een volledig persoonlijke AR-context van de wereld. Middels AR kennen zij waardes toe aan zichzelf, hun omgeving en aan de wereld om hen heen.

Dit alles gebeurt vooralsnog op speelse en ongedwongen wijze. Maar doordat Snapchat gebruikers zelf aan de slag laat gaan met de software, ontwikkelt het bedrijf een zeer gedetailleerd beeld van hoe de optimale gebruikerservaring eruitziet, en daarmee tegelijkertijd een beeld van hoe de optimale user interface eruitziet. De waardes en emoties die Snapchat meet aan de hand van de interpretaties en de beleving van de gebruikers, koppelt het bedrijf onmiddellijk terug door nieuwe features toe te voegen.

AR gestuurde interface

Snapchat schuift hiermee feitelijk steeds sneller op naar een volledig AR-gestuurde interface. Alleen die ontwikkeling gaat niet volgens onze verwachtingen. Want terwijl wij een bepaald beeld hebben van hoe een interface eruit hoort te zien, breekt Snapchat daar fundamenteel mee door aan te sturen richting een interface die de fysieke werkelijkheid onlosmakelijk met onze digitale wereld verbindt.

Vanuit die context is de introductie van een device als de Spectacles een zeer logische ontwikkeling. Want hoewel de hippe zonnebril in eerste instantie bedoeld is voor korte video-opnames, is de device qua specificaties bij uitstek geschikt voor AR-gebruik. Met de ontwikkeling naar een AR-gestuurde wearable komen we ook steeds dichter bij een realiteit waarin schermen niet langer een beperkende factor vormen voor onze communicatie met elkaar en met de wereld om ons heen. En dan?

En nu?

Als we vanuit deze ontwikkeling niet lineair volgen, maar rekening houden met een exponentiële versnelling, dan komen we uiteindelijk in een realiteit terecht waarin we een interface aan zullen sturen vanuit ons brein, verbonden met de cloud. In eerste instantie staan we dan misschien meer in contact met de werkelijkheid door het wegvallen van het scherm als obstakel, tegelijkertijd wordt die werkelijkheid meer en meer gevormd vanuit de context van onze eigen beleving.

Een subjectieve context waarin digitaal en fysiek steeds meer in elkaar overvloeien. Naarmate die scheidslijn nauwer wordt is er niet langer sprake van één van beide, maar van een hyperrealiteit, waarin AR en VR een door ons brein geconstrueerde omgeving laten zien. Alleen zichtbaar voor ons en ingericht naar onze specifieke voorkeuren. Een werkelijkheid waarin onze omgeving aansluit op onze beleving in plaats van vice versa.

De waarheid is natuurlijk per definitie onderhevig aan onze interpretatie van de realiteit (en daarmee feitelijk niet meer dan een constructie ons brein). Maar als in de toekomst het verschil tussen de interpretatie van de realiteit en de realiteit zoals wij die zelf fysiek en digitaal vormgeven, verdwijnt, creëren we dan niet feitelijk onze eigen Matrix? En als we onze eigen Matrix kunnen creëren, wie garandeert dan dat we dat niet allang gedaan hebben en we (zoals Elon Musk verondersteld) in een game leven.

Wat ik probeer aan te geven is dat het nooit makkelijk is om een nauwkeurig beeld van de toekomst te schetsen op basis van incomplete informatie. En aangezien beschikbare informatie vrijwel altijd incompleet is, blijft het gissen.

Zowel het verhaal van Snapchat als dat van Magic Leap bevestigt dat. De een zagen we wel aankomen maar bleek een farce, de ander zagen we niet aankomen maar blijkt onverwachts een groot succes. We kunnen dus eindeloos hoopvolle verwachtingen formuleren, maar niets garandeert dat de realiteit zich formeert naar onze verwachtingen. Wij kunnen veel beter de veranderende realiteit leren omarmen om er zo optimaal op in te kunnen spelen.

Eerder gepubliceerd: http://www.emerce.nl/opinie/snapchat-magic-leap-interface-toekomst