with proprietary information. ‘Sale, Last Three Days!’ ‘Next Bus 5 mins.’ ‘NOW – Happy Hour.’ Image overlaid with image, veiling the Real with arrows and exclamation points.
‘Bloody hell,’ she says.
I put what gloss on it I can, ‘With AR, you can thread private and public spaces through each other. You can turn public spaces into private screening rooms. Augmented Reality will change how space is used.’
‘You mean you’re privatizing it.’
‘What?’
‘You’re privatizing civic space.’
‘No—’
‘Yes. That’s what you’re doing. You’re doing away with personal perception. You’re directing people to see things a certain way. You’re telling people what to pay attention to.’
People who know nothing about advertising always assume people are defenceless against it. ‘That’s not going to happen.’
‘Really? Why not?’
I do my best to explain why AR is worthwhile. Virtual Reality was crack cocaine, spiriting its wraiths away to NeverNeverLand, and that is why it never really took off. Augmented Reality is different. ‘AR exists to heighten the present moment . . .’
‘Conrad.’ She waits for me to look at her. ‘It stifles the present moment. It replaces reality with a – a recording.’
How easy for Hanna to take the moral high ground, free of the burdens of ambition or responsibility or any interest beyond her own self-fantasy! ‘For fuck’s sake, you’re surely not going to tell me that your bloody boat trip is authentic , are you?’
Hanna smiles and shrugs and backs off and pretends not to understand. Of course she understands; she’s not stupid.
Hanna spends the rest of the day indoors with her maps and guides, her lists of foreign vocabulary and her text books. (Her language teaching is supposed to feed and equip the couple as they circumnavigate the earth.)
On board the boat, meanwhile, Michel plugs a loft-lamp into the extension lead and fits a sheet of ply across the width of the cabin to make a desk. The cabin doubles as his study.
He helps me on board. ‘You’ll like this,’ he says. Shoved deep in the bows is a grey plastic attaché case. Inside are maps. He spreads them over the plywood table.
A lot of the hills round here are called islands. Isle of This, Isle of That. ‘It’s in the place names, see? The land round here has been dry land, farmland, for only a couple of hundred years.’
It has been easy, an enjoyable thing for Michel to re-imagine this place, to make islands of these gentle hills and to trace and shade with a blue pencil the line of imaginary coastlines of the future. When we were children, school friends, Michel and I would play this same game, poring over my Dad’s old maps of the town, seeing which streets we could inundate, transforming familiar ground with a meshwork of inlets and peninsulas. There is something magnificent in the continuity of Michel’s obsessions. He hasn’t changed at all.
At the same time, how can he be so childish? ‘So how far into your book are you?’ I say, to prick his fantasy.
‘About three hundred thousand words.’
Which shuts me up.
He folds the maps away. ‘This stuff’s just the scene-setting, the research. In the end, so long as you’ve done it, so long as important bits of it are parked in the back of your head, none of this world-building nonsense matters. But I thought you’d like to see it.’ He knows I do not take his literary ambitions seriously.
‘So what’s next?’ I ask him.
‘I’ll have to find myself an agent.’
‘Good luck.’ But he has read my reaction, and gauged my disapproval, so there is no point in my keeping silent. ‘And this book of yours is going to help fund the voyage?’
‘That’s the idea.’ Then he casts his hand around the cabin and says something so off-point, so unexpected, it is night before I think to measure its implications. He says, ‘If, that is, we ever sail.’
Come nightfall, it is raining – a proper ocean
‘Bloody hell,’ she says.
I put what gloss on it I can, ‘With AR, you can thread private and public spaces through each other. You can turn public spaces into private screening rooms. Augmented Reality will change how space is used.’
‘You mean you’re privatizing it.’
‘What?’
‘You’re privatizing civic space.’
‘No—’
‘Yes. That’s what you’re doing. You’re doing away with personal perception. You’re directing people to see things a certain way. You’re telling people what to pay attention to.’
People who know nothing about advertising always assume people are defenceless against it. ‘That’s not going to happen.’
‘Really? Why not?’
I do my best to explain why AR is worthwhile. Virtual Reality was crack cocaine, spiriting its wraiths away to NeverNeverLand, and that is why it never really took off. Augmented Reality is different. ‘AR exists to heighten the present moment . . .’
‘Conrad.’ She waits for me to look at her. ‘It stifles the present moment. It replaces reality with a – a recording.’
How easy for Hanna to take the moral high ground, free of the burdens of ambition or responsibility or any interest beyond her own self-fantasy! ‘For fuck’s sake, you’re surely not going to tell me that your bloody boat trip is authentic , are you?’
Hanna smiles and shrugs and backs off and pretends not to understand. Of course she understands; she’s not stupid.
Hanna spends the rest of the day indoors with her maps and guides, her lists of foreign vocabulary and her text books. (Her language teaching is supposed to feed and equip the couple as they circumnavigate the earth.)
On board the boat, meanwhile, Michel plugs a loft-lamp into the extension lead and fits a sheet of ply across the width of the cabin to make a desk. The cabin doubles as his study.
He helps me on board. ‘You’ll like this,’ he says. Shoved deep in the bows is a grey plastic attaché case. Inside are maps. He spreads them over the plywood table.
A lot of the hills round here are called islands. Isle of This, Isle of That. ‘It’s in the place names, see? The land round here has been dry land, farmland, for only a couple of hundred years.’
It has been easy, an enjoyable thing for Michel to re-imagine this place, to make islands of these gentle hills and to trace and shade with a blue pencil the line of imaginary coastlines of the future. When we were children, school friends, Michel and I would play this same game, poring over my Dad’s old maps of the town, seeing which streets we could inundate, transforming familiar ground with a meshwork of inlets and peninsulas. There is something magnificent in the continuity of Michel’s obsessions. He hasn’t changed at all.
At the same time, how can he be so childish? ‘So how far into your book are you?’ I say, to prick his fantasy.
‘About three hundred thousand words.’
Which shuts me up.
He folds the maps away. ‘This stuff’s just the scene-setting, the research. In the end, so long as you’ve done it, so long as important bits of it are parked in the back of your head, none of this world-building nonsense matters. But I thought you’d like to see it.’ He knows I do not take his literary ambitions seriously.
‘So what’s next?’ I ask him.
‘I’ll have to find myself an agent.’
‘Good luck.’ But he has read my reaction, and gauged my disapproval, so there is no point in my keeping silent. ‘And this book of yours is going to help fund the voyage?’
‘That’s the idea.’ Then he casts his hand around the cabin and says something so off-point, so unexpected, it is night before I think to measure its implications. He says, ‘If, that is, we ever sail.’
Come nightfall, it is raining – a proper ocean
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