There's a J.G. Ballard short story called "The Concentration City" about a future Earth consumed by a city that is the world entire. The concept of "open space" is a myth, people pay high prices to live in glorified closets, and travel is considered pointless. Hell, there ain't even any air-travel because there's no room to fly!
This scares the crap out of me. Living in a closet in an endless city with almost zero sky would drive me crazy.
I don't consider myself claustrophobic, but I am very spatially conscious and aware it affects my psyche and ability to play nicely with others. It's mainly a visual thing--I don't like staring at the same place for too long and I like seeing everything spread out. Having things piled up in a mess makes me fidgety. Having too many windows open on my desktop makes me smash my mouse against a co-worker's face.
And this, my friends, is why an iPhone, iTouch, smartphone, Kindle, et cetera, would drive me fucking bonkers. Too much time spent staring at a tiny ass screen. My eyes would go south so quick, get all reddened, itchy, and everything will look fuzzy. People will think I'm on "the crank."
BUT WAIT! There's hope after all. From the far-off forgotten reaches of Thomas Edison's kingly nerd-i-ness, the projector is making a comeback, a Cinderella story that breathes hope into an otherwise teensy-weensy bite-size window of the future. Take a look:
That's right. Our tiny, hand-held, mobile devices can now PROJECT. Suddenly that tiny screen ain't so limiting, ain't so claustrophobic, because like a ray of sunbeam it can shine onto any surface. This is straight outta Star Wars and Futurama.
These devices, called pico projectors, aren't like the energy gluttons of movie projectors or even the digital projectors you might see lying around the office. They're LED. What that means and how it works, I still don't really understand, nor do I really care. If you wanna read more about it, check out this article from Fast Company (one of my new favorite websites).
Some smart-thinking German scienticians did a study about how vital and important the ability to project from a smartphone is, specifically for maps and geography. Instead of carrying a paper map around with you, or having to squint to look at the Google Maps App on your iPhone, you'd be able to project the damn thing onto a wall or someone's back and more comfortably read it.Holy crap, just think of what this could do for literary mediums. Forget the Kindle, forget electronic paper, forget the fact that only nerds read anymore, because BAM! now you can read that Foucault essay or Hemingway short story on the damn wall of your room! Suddenly everything is a printable/projectable surface! Suddenly claustrophobia becomes agoraphobia!
This reminds me of when I used to develop photography in a darkroom and discovered a fun thing called "liquid light," which allows you to develop a photograph on any surface coated with a light-sensitive goo. I developed photos on tiles, canvas, my arm, and even a soccer ball (which still hangs in my parents' house).
Honestly, I've been wanting to take advantage of projectors for a while. In particular for that damned hyper-photo-fiction project I did, One Way. It is slow, bulky, and clumsy when done on a computer screen. But I can see it really coming to life if projected, if it is allowed to appear in a larger context that doesn't make it feel so damn cramped.
It's fun to think about this as a writer, really. The thought of the written word not being limited to a solidified, self-contained surface. What else could be done with this? Oh my imagination can run wild, and perhaps even lead me to hope the future will not be claustrophobic like J.G. Ballard's "The Concentration City." But, it probably will be, and projectors might be the only computer screen we ever get (they kinda are space-savers).
So when that cramped, cluttered, sky-scraper dominated landscape comes to fruition, ya'll better keep outta my business or I might freak.
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