THE PARALLEL UNIVERSE
During the late 19th century and the early 20th, a wide range of
inventors or tinkerers, as they were then described, often played
alone, in tiny rooms, shacks or log cabins, putting together the
early pieces of industrial age essentials. These geniuses dreamed up
copper wire, electric light bulbs, voltmeters, switches, telegraph
keys and all those wondrous mechanical and electric inventions and
paraphernalia so familiar to us today. The parts, then still new and
exciting in their own right, were later married into newer inventions
in such developing fields as radio, telephony, photography, medicine,
the refining of petroleum, more modern steel production, flight
technology, automobiles and television.
Today, many more Bells, Edisons, Fords, Teslas, Bantings, Cricks and
Watsons are working on technological contributions to the 21st century. Like the earlier inventors, facilitators and entrepreneurs,
they have financial problems (Henry Ford reportedly went bankrupt
five times). Even the raw and rustic devices used today are a thousand times more expensive than those of a century ago. This sometimes
forces tinkerers to switch to new avenues, resulting in unforeseen
developments that might have been missed during the original conventional research. Or it might have killed off a potential Nobel Prizewinning development. Such is the price of progress in the age of the
risk-taker.
Recently I visited a tinkerer of the times in his Calgary laboratory.
This is a lab not at all similar to the pictures of laboratories from
1890 to 1920. But the mental activity inside such labs today is
similar. Alone and in small groups researchers are trying to explore
the unknown and find the future. In this case find what does not
exist -- even after it has been created! Something that can only
appear in "The Parallel Universe". If this sounds like "Star Trek",
that's because The Parallel Universe really is "going where no man
has gone before".
James Durward, along with "crew" members Mike Nemeth and Jonathan
Levine, are attempting to build a city before knowing where the first
brick is coming from, before the first sod is turned and before the
first machinery arrives. They are building it in "The Parallel
Universe" ... a world created using what real-world parts could
afford to be purchased, scrounged or built to assemble the "vehicle"
required to take them there. The basics in the laboratory are a
large movie-type screen, two large-screen, hung-from-the-ceiling
video projectors, a computer work station, a king-sized track-ball
and a big boomerang-shaped desk with a large, swiveling comfortable
leather executive chair -- that remains about 10 feet from the
screen -- until one puts on 3-D-type glasses and moves into the
parallel universe. The initial effect is not unlike LSD.
In any altered state, one has to go, at least initially, where one
has not been before on any personal out-of-this-world trip. Durward
is trying to build a golf course, where one like this has never been
seen before, build a housing development with every block and pipe
when nothing like this one had been attempted previously, or create a
city whose it's future location may not yet be known. Such are the
tantalizing possibilities and challenges within a parallel universe.
Durward's "Parallel Universe" crew are currently primarily interested
in two applications -- architecture and industrial design. They
believe that viewing any development in this manner will alter the
way in which the collaborative design process occurs -- either in
the same room or continents apart.
It looks like the Durward crew will succeed. Their lab is a multidimensional world ... with greater depth than earth-bound reality and
with the flexibility to increase, shrink, create, eradicate and turn
almost anything inside out or upside down. They can merge two separate buildings together vertically and horizontally. To add,
subtract, change or extend any part of the building or anything used
to create the building -- then electronically transfer the "dream"
into something desirable and possible, back in the original realityworld. Durward is interested in the potential in architecture, land
development, landscape sculpting and city creation. The Calgary
company has selected their niche in this new medium. They are using
techniques similar to other fields of artificial reality where they
are experimenting in the air, underground, in the sea, the mind and
some even attempting to penetrate feelings of sex, love and the soul.
The boundaries are as broad as the parallel universe itself.
Durward's crew have created a world that enables them "to see things
as they may be". They have seen the future -- and it is an
"electronic erector set".
This new world encompasses "cyberspace", the space that exists
between man and his machines. Within this nether world it is now
possible to create almost any dream. A city, a resort, a jungle,
polar ice cap, sleek panther, goddess or a devil; interact with
either or all; and even share the experience with someone half a
(real) planet away. As such techniques improve the reality will
surpass the present.
This new field, which rockets CAD (computer-aided design) and CAM
(computer-aided manufacturing) into the future, is an accelerated
high tech parallel to the early days of the 20th century when cars,
gasoline, roads, highways and electric power brought dramatic changes
to our way of life. Fortunes in these fields grew as the 20th century developed. Fortunes of the future in the 21st century will
evolve from such initiatives as "the parallel universe".
More information:
James Durward, President,
The Parallel Universe Inc.,
P.O. Box 23046, Connaught Post Office,
Calgary, AB, T2S 3B1.
Phone/Fax: 403/261-5652.
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