impossible implications

catering to the masses.
what does that mean?

dr. hailey used to always talk about a vision he had, about the day when documentation and instruction would become an instantaneous process. the very moment when you, stuck under your shiny blue honda with your hands black with grease, need to know what that funky-shaped thing on the left actually does, you can call out of nowhere a full in-depth tutorial, especially about shiny blue hondas and funky-shaped thingys, telling you everything you need to know, and nothing else.

big vision.

why not just yell, 'hey dad, dad--what's this bit here again?' and have him launch into his everything-i-ever-learned-about-motor-maintenance speil. just as good, right?

well, just as instantaneous, and that seems to be the big impossible crux of dr. hailey's vision.

writing full in-depth tutorials for exactly what some mechanic (or wannabe mechanic) needs to know about the funky-shaped bit of his engine requires predicting exactly what that mechanic will need to know, and having it written up, with pictures, in some magical application that will display all that information to him while he's laying under his shiny blue honda.

impossible.

i don't mean the application. someday, someone is going to invent some application that can cast easily viewable in-depth tutorials underneath a car.

it's the prediction that i find unbelievable. the depth of my curiosity is such i don't imagine anyone foreseeing all the questions i will ever ask, much less in the right order, under the right circumstance.

so i think this magical instantaneous instruction, if it is going to be truly useful, will have to be the unstorable kind. unstorable like all the experience your dad has in his head unstorable.

your dad is thousands of miles away. to combine you, your blue honda, and your dad... is that beyond the scope of future technology?

all you need are a couple of camera-esque screens and the beautiful, magical thing we call the internet, right?

and then, once everyone on the planet is thusly equipped, it'll just be a matter of connecting the right people. the people who know, and the people who need to know. because as much as information seems to float around, unchained and undocumented, it doesn't really exist without people. without people to be informed, or misinformed, uninformed, or informative, information has no life.

so it comes down to the pieces of you and the pieces of everyoneelse. somewhere they have to come together.

no islands.

the continent is where all the action is.