A fabulous New App guaranteed to create a major market niche C-Span re-broadcast a lecture by Michio Kaku about his 2014 book, The Future of the Mind. Two points: (1) If you want a first class lesson in how to deliver a dynamic and memorable speech before an audience, watch a video of this lecture. He is good, really good, in fact one of the very best that I have ever seen / heard. (2) Michio Kaku speculated that in the near future we will be able to download entire human memory banks and electronically store the minds of once living people. In fact there are all kinds of projects seeking to do exactly this, now under way, along with storing all of someone's genome information. This means that in, say, 2025, you might be able to go to a "personality store" in your favorite shopping mall and purchase as many "people" as you'd like to take home, download into a computer, and access when desired for any purposes you may have, like having a conversation at 3 AM with Benyamin Netanyahu, Narendra Modi, and Angela Merkel. Or if foreign policy isn't what you'd most like to talk about at 3 AM maybe your preference would be Walter Cronkite, Avril Lavigne, and Lou Holtz. Or if it was me at 3 AM, I would prefer Avril Lavigne and forget about anyone else. A ready made market would exist for real-life people in your family who have departed this mortal coil, a beloved spouse, for example, or a long lost and presumably dead friend. Kaku discussed how good it would be to have a disc of Abraham Lincoln to talk to, with his image floating in the room as a hologram as you and he conversed about American political philosophy, for instance. Think Jorel talking to Clark Kent via hologram, said Kaku, long after Krypton had been destroyed in a thermonuclear blast. Yet that cannot be done; Lincoln's life is no longer accessible. Nor are the lives of other famous people from the past you might wish to talk with, say, Benjamin Franklin, Teddy Roosevelt, Adlai Stevenson, Eisenhower, or JFK. Which leads to an idea for how to nonetheless simulate all kinds of famous people from the past via the magic of computer technology. It turns out that a helluva lot is known about a great number of people, especially for the years since about 1500 AD. Before then there are only a few biographies that are based on comprehensive solid information. You could put a wealth of information on a disc about Martin Luther but nothing remotely as "whole" for most others who lived before that era, although here and there you can find fairly good sources of information such as for Socrates, even though it would be spotty, or Hildegard von Bingen, the medieval woman composer and religious thinker who happened to have written a lot of stuff down about her life and ideas. But after 1500, especially after about 1750, and even more especially after 1850, there are thousands of world class biographies. And hot biographies can sell in the many millions of copies over the course of several years. So, who would you like to talk to? If you are Mormon, how about Brigham Young? Heck, I'd like to talk with Brigham Young. How about James Madison? Or Dolly Madison? On my short list would be Lewis and Clark, that's for sure. As an student of 20th century ideologies, I'd like to talk with Himmler, to really get the lowdown on Nazi mentality and worldview; but not Hitler inasmuch as he was clinically insane. Himmler was a criminal, no question about it, but he was rational and you could learn all kinds of actual facts from him even though you despise everything he ever stood for. And, yes, you could read a 500 page book about Himmler if you wanted, but I would prefer to just ask him 20 or so pointed questions. There are some fascinating women it would be terrific to talk with, like Victoria Woodhull, Clare Booth Luce, Nadia Boulenger, Karen Horney, Alice Longworth, and Aimee Semple McPherson. It would be incredible to talk with Sri Aurobindo and Mira Richard. Or Alan Watts, or D. T . Suzuki. For me near the top of the list would be Henri Saint-Simon. The list goes on -and on, and on, and on. John Wayne. Walt Disney. Claude Debussy. Vladimir Nabokov. HL Mencken. Marcus Garvey. Dr Charles Socarides. Patton. Frank Lloyd Wright. Astor Piazzola. Carl Sagan. Marshall McLuhan, Julian Huxley. Sigmund Freud. Mircea Eliade. Joseph Campbell. Arthur C. Clarke. Stephen Ambrose. Jules Verne. Albert Schweitzer. Peter Drucker. Lawrence O'Brien. And etc, etc, etc. This leads to the "fabulous New App." For it turns out that it should be possible to create a comprehensive a life story -far more than even the longest biography- of literally thousands of important people. The expertise certainly exists. The people necessary for the job are known as "historians." You would also need specialists in such fields as photography or, where applicable, cinematography, for the purpose of creating the best possible holograms. But think of the possibilities, similar in some respects to video advertising that features long departed film stars hawking modern day products such as the latest automobiles or new-fangled electronics. Back from the grave could be anyone you have an interest in, to appear before you -or in the presence of yourself and some friends over for conversation. That is, we are talking about one helluva branching program and some utterly fabulous algorithms that are thought through thoroughly so that conversation would be feasible and believable. There are bound to be commercial or other "serious" uses for this sort of thing. Some businesses might commission a proprietary disc just for "in house" use. Apple, for instance, might find it valuable to "resurrect" Steve Jobs. Which would necessarily mean far more than consulting Isaacson's hagiography, but an actual "warts and all" life story -to capture the essence of the man. WWSJD -what would Steve Jobs do?- could then be answered, while not with anything like total accuracy, with potentially greater accuracy than contemporary Apple-ites discussing Jobs on coffee break, their opinions based on necessarily incomplete memories and conditioned by 2014 internal Apple politics. The Pentagon might want to talk with Douglas MacArthur now and then. Or Chester Nimitz. And especially with enemy generals in time of war. And no telling whom the CIA might like to have on call. Something like this would cost a lot of money to do it right. The very first might require a budget comparable to a feature Hollywood movie. Once the process became professionalized the costs ought to drop significantly, to the $1 million range -to pull a number out of thin air. But even a best case scenario and this would not be cheap. However, the rewards should be enormous. You could compare the finished product to the Hal Holbrook recreations of Mark Twain. What if you could summon Twain into your living room whenever you wanted? What would that be worth? At least $ 29.95 Of course, this assumes at least 10 million people paying about 30 dollars apiece to make it all worth while. Indeed, the business might well resemble Hollywood as "producers" seek to put lives on discs, seeking to memorialize and make live again those people who could command the greatest market share. The idea is not "simple" biography, but a mix of interpretations of famous people, with input from multiple biographers to create a holistic / realistic "portrait" to make use of. The life story of a political figure would require not only the work of a diligent technical biographer, but insights from someone on the Left, someone on the Right, and an Independent, plus for good measure, someone most interested in psychohistory, or such specialities as economic history or military history. The computational power to do this did not exist 10 years ago. It does exist now even if necessarily in an early form subject to a good deal of improvement. As for practical uses in the consumer realm, think of how valuable it would be for a novelist to have at his (or her) beck and call, the likes of Stephen King, Ernest Hemingway, Nora Ephron, Franz Kafka, George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, Louis L'Amour, Chekov, Eugene O'Neill, Isaac Bashevis Singer, George Orwell, Ellery Queen, Harlan Ellison, J. D. Salinger, C. S. Lewis, Michael Crichton, Ray Bradbury, or still others. The film industry itself should have little difficulty in such "consulting services" which, God-only-knows it needs, considering the fact that at a minimum 90% of all Hollywood movies consist of unadulterated crap, mostly thrown together by pop culture 20-somethings who don't know their asses from holes in the ground. And I'm being kind in this evaluation; you should hear me in private when watching movies at home alone on TV, "analyzing" each one that comes on screen, in turn: This is sh*t. This is still more sh*t. This is additional sh*t. This is horrible sh*t. This is disgusting sh*t. This is mindless sh*t. This is worthless sh*t. And so forth. There should be incredible educational uses as well, and if someone doesn't think that colleges and universities aren't multi-billion dollar markets, he or she would be dreaming. And, of course, the budget for America's 15,000 or so school districts also is well into the billions. There is also legal use to consider. Think of, for instance, how a hypothetical Supreme Court might decide a case. Or what arguments the justices might make. The cast of characters could consist of sitting justices or, for other purposes, an "ideal" bench consisting of Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Marshall, William O. Douglas, and so forth. Other professions that might well find uses for this "App" could include law enforcement, journalism, advertising, and psychiatry. Are there problems to contemplate? Of course. Indeed, it takes little imagination to think of objections to the whole idea: * You don't understand the business * Return on investment would be problematic * I'm not sure if there really is a market for the product * We should stick to what we do best, and that old standby- * We have more important things to do with our time This is major league baseball scouting in reverse, not: "what fresh talent can we make the most of ?" but "what fresh talent can we successfully ignore ?" "Because, you see, business is a zero sum game, and if anyone else gets any recognition then, necessarily, this undercuts my position with the firm." Which of course, is 180 degrees false, but it happens to be how most people think, viscerally, no matter what official ideology may say. As well, some companies will not consider input from anyone except employees or paid consultants; outside ideas are not welcome. This is policy at Southwest Airlines, Microsoft, IBM, and many other firms. I understand issues of legal liability, which is the main reason for such policy, but all things considered, it is about as stupid as policy as it is possible to get. For all of my disagreements with Alvin Toffler, he had one thing very right. He maintained a Vox Populi file consisting of unsolicited ideas sent him by readers of his books. While not all that often, at least now and then he came across a new concept from this source -some unique individual- that gave him valuable new insights. Unfortunately, when a business is shackled to a suite of attorneys it shoots itself in the foot, or in the head, for the sake of possible lawsuits that are so improbable that no-one but idiots would take them seriously. Yes, in-house ideas can be damned good. That isn't the issue. The issue is identifying important new ideas that someone in-house, precisely because of his / her obligations to a company and pro-company biases would be highly unlikely to ever conceive. All of those kinds of ideas, by definition, never come to anyone's attention. So, here is a bold new idea that, some day, will earn millions of dollars for a company, or hundreds of millions of dollars. And it is a sure bet that this idea will be met with nay-saying from the outset and for any number of months or years thereafter. I expect nothing less. I an accustomed to nay-sayers. They make me sick, but they are part of the woodwork. Each of them reminds me of the general who was present at Los Alamos in 1945 prior to the detonation of the world's first atomic bomb. Said the general: "This thing will never work; I speak as an expert on explosives." To each and every nay-sayer who reacts negatively to this idea all that I have to say is: "You'll only have yourself to blame when someone else does understand the potential and decides to invest in it and, soon enough, starts to make a fortune from it." Every movie studio in America turned down Gone With the Wind, except the last one that Margaret Mitchell solicited Yes, this is far easier said than done. And I lack all high-tech competence to see this come into being. However, the idea is worth something. Without the idea all the necessary work to make things happen would never begin. In appreciation for all that hard work, and the great costs that would be necessary, I am not asking for anything at all -except: One-half of 1% of profits from anyone who does use the idea successfully. Not one penny from anything else but actual profits. I have no way to "enforce" this request, but at such time as it becomes reality here is documented proof that I thought of the concept, outlined its potential in some detail, Circulated the idea as widely as it was possible for me to do, and provided the benefit of my education and creativity to the project, about which I would feel free to make the most of should it ever seem to be advisable to do so. Of any monies I may earn from this enterprise it would please me to make sure that Michio Kaku receives 1 and one-half % of my income from this source. The idea, after all, derives from his concepts. With his permission I'd like to call the App "Michio." Billy R. September 14, 2014
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