Gary Rivlin reports. Mitchel Resnick Steven Johnson talks to the MIT Media Lab visionary about 21st century toys. James Ledbetter reports. My invention reads a living system, from a cloud forest in Costa Rica to a tiny fairy ring of mushrooms, to a puddle. The colors are so splendid and the light so luminous that the user may understand for the first time that every place we stand and look upon is alive.
People cry when it is turned on.
They are stunned, as one who has never seen can now see brilliant color, light, and movement. They are astonished by the grace of a world they had once demeaned and were blind to, as if some psychotropic compound had permeated every cell of the nervous system to reveal the world as it really is, at all times. When they have assimilated the vistas of the living world, which may take many years, even decades, they can play with the dials and controls to see if they can improve on these systems, as holographic models, changing the stock and flows and dynamics, like an endless game of infinite complexity that in its play transforms the minds of any who use this invention. Toward a Voluntary History. He is the cofounder of several businesses, and lives in Sausalito, California.