Watch My Keynote - The Future of Arts & Culture: A New Canvas

Augmented reality is a marvelous emerging canvas for human creativity, connection and collaboration. It is brilliant, beautiful, limitless, and still uncharted and unsettled territory, much like the early days of the Internet, or when the first group of Burners set foot on the vast playa in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada.

I write this from my home office, after 5 weeks of sheltering-in-place in San Francisco during covid-19, where I've watched the entire world being forced to innovate and adapt to use new online tools and toys. Every in-person gathering is cancelled and every cultural venue is closed. This is an inflection point for humanity and technology, and though this is a time of global tragedy, it is also the birth of a new era of possibility.

We can't always go out into the world to play and create together, but we can bring the world to us, and we can play, create and innovate together in 3D digital form. That's what I am helping to enable at Enklu with our remote 3D augmented reality creation platform.

Even when we can venture outside again, we are likely to think twice about where we are going and what we do, and the impacts it might have on each other and our planet. Maybe we won't choose to burn all those fossil fuels to travel to see a one-off museum show if we can explore a holographic version of the exhibit right in our living room. I hope we'll at least pause and consider the right action. I know I will... for the rest of my life.

Immersive technologies are powerful remote communication tools and platforms for connective experiences. As an added bonus, it can feel like you have stepped into a science fiction film or a magical dimension with unlimited possibilities where the rules have yet to be written. The tools are available now, and it's easier than you may think.

Last Halloween (my birthday) I gave this talk at the ATECH Conference in Aruba about the artistic qualities, cultural phenomenon and innovation that I've seen arise from the human spirit when we're allowed to play together in a new creative canvas. I hope you enjoy it.

Someday soon these experiences, and this creative canvas, will be a part of all of our everyday lives. What will you do with these new possibilities and when will you come play in these new dimensions with me?