The Berlin Files #72: virtual machetes
The future of cars, comms, and live events, along with much more on hopeful signals, quarantine life, and radical transformations.
Hi all! Eric here, with a slimmed down summer size edition of the Files this week. Quick programming note that I'm taking next week off for the holiday weekend, so see you back around the old e-mail inbox in two weeks.
Hopeful Signals, Quarantine Life, & Radical Transformations
Vaccine & Treatment Progress
While no one can predict the future with any certainty, there are some smart people outlining pretty well defined time horizons for when we might see significant progress on vaccine or treatment developments. For example, here's a doctor and former head of the FDA looking at a six month window "to end the Covid epidemic through vaccines or medicines."
Bottom line: there's a lot of nuance and complexity under the hood, but long story short is that wearing masks = helpful in preventing the spread of COVID.
The Future of... Cars
What I mean here has nothing to do with new-fangled car tech or autonomous vehicle capabilities, though there's all kinds of interesting stuff to get into there.
I'm specifically referring to the new and/or increased ways that cars are being leveraged in this age of social distancing.
Some examples:
Drive-thru restaurants, coffee shops, supermarkets, and other kinds of retail stores might just be the future of "brick and mortar" shopping
Job interviews conducted via drive-thru!
The Future Of... Communicating
We've seen live concerts take place within the world of Fortnite and college classes taking place within Second Life-like worlds, so why not hang out with Danny Trejo within Animal Crossing: New Horizons?
If this simply makes you want to bust out a machete, I can hardly blame you.
If it's not clear, I'm very much joking around about the iconic character actor's star vehicle that sprung up out of a genius fake movie trailer interstitial from Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriquez' Grindhouse. The point is, if there is one, is that we're still in the earliest stages in terms of the ways in which digital communities, virtual reality, and human interaction, communication, entertainment, and collaboration are going to merge and influence one another.
Recovery Progress
With much of the United States seeing an increasing number of new coronavirus cases over the last several weeks, it's encouraging to see the northeastern states continuing to do well after flattening the curve.
Quarantining
This is kind of the opposite of quarantining and yet I think you'll see how it fits. In any event, it's an extraordinary story: "With Flights Banned, Son Sails Solo Across Atlantic to Reach Father, 90":
Days after Argentina canceled all international passenger flights to shield the country from the new coronavirus, Juan Manuel Ballestero began his journey home the only way possible: He stepped aboard his small sailboat for what turned out to be an 85-day odyssey across the Atlantic.
The Future of... Live Events
I'm a lifelong fan of the New York football Giants, and happened to catch this tweet about the upcoming season.
It's a weird and fascinating bit of news during such an unusual time in all of our lives. Imagine, for example, seeing this four months ago?
The pop culture Rolodex in my brain immediately opened to the video store scene from I Am Legend, where Will Smith uses some mannequins in a video store to retain some tiny hold on normalcy amidst a zombie apocalypse.
I then started thinking about "Fifteen Million Merits," the brilliant Black Mirror episode. There's a lot of wild, disturbing, and provocative things going on that I could discuss further here -- including Daniel Kaluuya's mesmerizing performance -- but specifically I was reminded of the digital avatars used to project the notion of a "live audience" (in this case, to witness a creepy version of an American Idol-type reality show).
So the audience consists of "real people," it's just that they are viewing the show from afar while their projected avatar moves and reacts as they are doing, virtual reality-like, though under the cover of a cartoon-ish projection. I think we're meant to consider that the age of social media and anonymous or semi-anonymous representation in a digital realm can enforce a greater sense of loneliness and isolation even while under the pretense of bringing people together.
So that's to say that if cardboard cutouts help present the illusion of live fans in the stands for, one hopes and imagines, the safe return of the National Football League, that's great. And it's not too far of a leap in logic to have multiple camera angles and "fan cams" in the stands for viewers to choose from to help further replicate the live experience. And, to jump a little further in logic, it's not impossible to imagine some form of the Black Mirror avatars becoming a real thing at some point in the not too distant future.
Of course, people crave gathering together to witness and in some sense participate in spectacle and competition and performance. It’s an inherent part of being a sports fan and feeling like you belong to a community of like minded people (even if some are painted head to toe and wear hats shape like specific kinds of cheese).
And the best and clearest path back to that is a coronavirus vaccine that allows for all the activities we took for granted in the Before Times — with attending sports events being a small but important benefit in the grand scheme of things. In the meantime, I'd expect there will be much more experimentation around replicating the "live experience," though without the darker Black Mirror-y implications, one hopes.
The Music Club
Remember the Rick Roll era? If that rings a bell at all, you likely share an odd nostalgia for a (slightly) younger and more innocent time on the Internet, when the cleverest person in your friend group would consistently send out a link and a message along the lines of, "You've gotta check this out ASAP!" that would inevitably lead to Rick Astley's 1987 classic, "Never Gonna Give You Up." Ah, good times.
Well, Rick is back! Here he is with a cover of Foo Fighters' "Everlong."
I'm a huge fan of the Foos' self-titled debut album, but I haven't enjoyed subsequent releases nearly as much. "Everlong" is a big exception though; it's a fantastic song.
The Comedy Club
It's a time to be tenacious. Tenacious D, that is.
Election 2020
There were a slew of really bad polls for Trump this week. It's possible that this is the moment in the campaign when Biden became the clear favorite in the race. A lot can change in four months, of course. But this tweet and link to a major NYT Upshot/Siena College poll sums up the current state of the race pretty well.
Climate Watch
Tweet of the Week
It's a Wrap!
You made it. Now get back to clearing out that (virtual) brush.
Also:
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And one last time…