Adumbrate Foreshadow and Herald Harbinger converse about the future.
Adumbrate: “Would be great if we could actually see the future.”
Herald: “Or around corners. Maybe ‘around corners’ would be all we need to see. If we could see around a corner, we would avoid many accidents, not just at crossroads, but also on every big city intersection and in every home hallway with running kids. Can’t tell you how many times I crashed into people at 34th and Broadway during lunch hour. The city should put up those convex mirrors on traffic light/walk sign poles.”
Adumbrate: “You think small.”
Herald: “No, I think practically.”
Adumbrate: “But you’re just focusing on small collisions that can’t change the world. I’m thinking of the unknowns that are headed our way, or rather, toward which we are headed on the bases of the smallest clues and the largest assumptions.”
Herald: “But small tends to grow. Say I collide with a guy on his hurried way to an important meeting, say, an interview for a new job, and I knock him down and scatter his papers in that accidental collision. He gets dirty, the papers get tramped on at the busy intersection, he breaks his glasses and scuffs his shoes. Poor guy. He gets up, races off in a bad mood, gets to the interview a few minutes late, loses the opportunity—not to mention the shine on his shoes. Now, what if that guy had the potential to turn the company into the next Amazon or Tesla? He’s out of a potential job. The company is out of a potential growth and remains on the periphery of great success. And all this because neither he nor I could see around the corner of the building at 34th and Broadway.”
Adumbrate: “Okay, I get your point. It’s that chaos theory stuff, the initial condition setting up a cascade of events, butterfly’s wings flapping in Brazil causing a tornado elsewhere. But I was thinking not about the little things around the corner though you make a good point about someone’s changing the course of a company. I was thinking about see the big events around the corners of our, not just individual lives, but collective lives, as in a whole country. I was thinking of non-line-of-sight imaging. You know, that’s a tech that will become a thing—that I CAN foresee. I just read about the technology tweaked by Ji Hyun Nam and others to make ‘seeing’ around a corner closer to practical reality. Nam, Brandt, Bauer, Liu, Renna, Tosi, Sifakis, and Velten were able to image an object by its reflection off barely or even ‘non-retroreflective’ surfaces, basically, they captured the image of something casting a shadow on a wall, not just the shadow, mind you, the 3D object itself—and its motion.” *
Herald: “Tell me a bit more, but keep it simple.”
Adumbrate: “These people were able to make monochrome but still fuzzy videos that captured motion and distinguished objects in 3D in real time—well, with a one-second delay— around a corner. Still, even with a one-second delay, not bad, right? I mean, think about it. If you had an extra second’s warning as you approached the intersection, you could avoid the collision. Their technology, if wearable, would reduce the chances of that collision on the sidewalk at 34th and Broadway. Your device would show you someone’s coming simply by using light bouncing off a pole or newspaper dispenser on the sidewalk.”
Herald: “What’s this tech?”
Adumbrate: “NLOS, non-line-of-sight.”
Herald: “Oh! Like Einstein’s gravitational lensing without the gravity.”
Adumbrate: “Not really; there’s no bending of light, no refraction, but in a way yeah. Gravitational lensing lets us see a galaxy hidden by another galaxy. But there’s no light-bending going on in NLOS. It’s a matter of reflection from a low-reflective surface. The software takes what it can get from a reflection and images the object hidden around the corner.”
Herald: “I see the practicality. I could know what’s around the corner. No more surprises.”
Adumbrate: “You can also see why the military threw some money behind it. Pretty soon there will be no place to hide unless there isn’t a reflection. It would be an advantage in daytime and low light urban warfare. Police would want it also. But then, I suppose criminals could use it to ambush people. There’s always a potential downside to any tech, and as we know, if there’s a potentially malicious use, some bad guy will exploit it.”
Herald: “But now I see why you brought up the subject. Of course, but a tech that works with objects around corners doesn’t tell us where we’re headed very far into the future.”
Adumbrate: “No, that tech works only on the order of a few meters though the developers say it could extend farther with technical advancements. And no doubt it will become the next sought after tech for your smart phone. People will be holding up their phones as they approach corners because the camera systems will incorporate non-line-of-sight images. Paparazzi will hide to capture the antics of unsuspecting celebrities. People will take pictures of people they can’t directly see. Won’t be any hiding places, as I said.”
Herald: “But of course we really can’t see much into the future. It’s actually seeing what’s going on in the present, but out of direct line of sight. Tech can’t see into the future, can it?”
Adumbrate: “People think so. Thus, people make computer models of what can happen, and supposedly, with good modeling, produce a clear picture of an actual future is supposed to emerge. I guess that’s what the climate modelers and city planners are supposed to see. We’ve always been obsessed with seeing the future, thus soothsayers, fortune tellers, forecasters, the whole lot of predictors, including Harold Camping who erroneously predicted the end of the world several times. And back to those climate modelers upon whom all those politicians in Glasgow followed, can’t anyone learn the lesson that the future of a complex world is just as complex as the present world? After thousands of years of failed soothsaying, people still believe they can produce accurate 3D constructions of the future. Generation after generation has to learn that all such ‘seeing around the corner of time’ usually yields an image as fuzzy as the non-line-of-sight images that Nam’s group produces. Think of what all those past climate models told us about temperature and sea level, predictions that were close range, on the order of twenty years, from say 2000 to 2020. Seeing around the corner through models hasn’t worked very well because, like the guy you hypothetically bumped into at 34th and Broadway, his individual future couldn’t be known. Remember all those dire predictions about the effects of global warming that have as yet to become reality? And remember the specific predictions and projections? The past failures at seeing the future, seeing around the corner of time, now make me think of the other kinds of predictions, such as the ones voters make when they buy into the promises made during political campaigns. Yeah, I wish I could see round the corner of time and down the road to future bad decisions, not just for me personally, but for the country, for the sake of…”
Herald: “I’m not going there. How could you turn a conversation on non-line-of-sight imaging technology into something about climate or economics or whatever?”
Adumbrate: “I want what you mentioned on a different scale. I don’t want to run into someone at the intersections of my life, of course. I don’t need collisions with people hurrying off to some special future they believe only they can see. You know, if you hadn’t had that hypothetical collision and the guy made his interview and got the job, he might have been the catalyst to destroy, and not to build, his company. I just don’t want to crash into a group that can’t see around the corner to avoid hurting me or millions of others, so rushed are they and so obsessed with what they believe they see that they rely on the blurriest of images. The complex Earth systems that interact to shape climate are like the complex economic vicissitudes that interact to drive the stock market up or down, that drive market crashes. Many images of the future are blurry. They have only a few pixels. They might reveal general shapes, but not sharply defined objects.”
Herald: “I agree; we might be able to develop a see-around-the-corner tech, but humans will never have a clear picture of the future. We’ll always just have good guesses and bad guesses. I know, for example, that at noon at 34th and Broadway, there will be a crowd rushing who knows where with collisions likely at the corners. That’s a relatively easy thing to predict. But maybe those modelers believe they have a good chance of seeing the future based on big numbers like noontime crowds.”
Adumbrate: “Except the future isn’t just about the normal crowds. It’s about the unexpected complexities. Construction crews doing work on the sidewalk change the traffic flow; spills make pedestrians alter where they step. And to use your example, I’ll say that just as there was an avalanche of events after your hypothetical run-in with a stranger on his way to an interview, so the little decisions—and the big ones—that politicians are making today based on previously faulty models of economics and climate will also result in an avalanche of unintended consequences and bad results.”
Herald: “So, then, what’s the best we can hope for?”
Adumbrate: “I guess just seeing a fuzzy image of something that we would discover in a second or so when we rounded the corner. I guess what we can hope for is that we can react to avoid collisions.”
Herald: “But surely, there are cues and clues about what’s to come.”
Adumbrate: “Some. But remember that complexity abounds. People and planets are known for doing the unexpected. Ask anyone who lives near a volcano or in an earthquake zone. Ask anyone who thought American economy was great before a pandemic struck and a politician shut off oil independence. Sure, around the corner is the next eruption or earthquake, but exactly when and how intense is a different matter, a matter that counts. A slight bump into someone on a sidewalk at an intersection is different from a knockdown, and a warning of a few meters and a second isn’t always enough to prevent a disaster of large proportions.”
Herald: "As I said, maybe all we need to see is around the closest corner. Maybe all we will ever really see is just around the closest corner."
Note:
*Nam, J.H., Brandt, E., Bauer, S. et al. Low-latency time-of-flight non-line-of-sight imaging at 5 frames per second. Nat Commun 12, 6526 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-26721-x ;
Adumbrate: “Would be great if we could actually see the future.”
Herald: “Or around corners. Maybe ‘around corners’ would be all we need to see. If we could see around a corner, we would avoid many accidents, not just at crossroads, but also on every big city intersection and in every home hallway with running kids. Can’t tell you how many times I crashed into people at 34th and Broadway during lunch hour. The city should put up those convex mirrors on traffic light/walk sign poles.”
Adumbrate: “You think small.”
Herald: “No, I think practically.”
Adumbrate: “But you’re just focusing on small collisions that can’t change the world. I’m thinking of the unknowns that are headed our way, or rather, toward which we are headed on the bases of the smallest clues and the largest assumptions.”
Herald: “But small tends to grow. Say I collide with a guy on his hurried way to an important meeting, say, an interview for a new job, and I knock him down and scatter his papers in that accidental collision. He gets dirty, the papers get tramped on at the busy intersection, he breaks his glasses and scuffs his shoes. Poor guy. He gets up, races off in a bad mood, gets to the interview a few minutes late, loses the opportunity—not to mention the shine on his shoes. Now, what if that guy had the potential to turn the company into the next Amazon or Tesla? He’s out of a potential job. The company is out of a potential growth and remains on the periphery of great success. And all this because neither he nor I could see around the corner of the building at 34th and Broadway.”
Adumbrate: “Okay, I get your point. It’s that chaos theory stuff, the initial condition setting up a cascade of events, butterfly’s wings flapping in Brazil causing a tornado elsewhere. But I was thinking not about the little things around the corner though you make a good point about someone’s changing the course of a company. I was thinking about see the big events around the corners of our, not just individual lives, but collective lives, as in a whole country. I was thinking of non-line-of-sight imaging. You know, that’s a tech that will become a thing—that I CAN foresee. I just read about the technology tweaked by Ji Hyun Nam and others to make ‘seeing’ around a corner closer to practical reality. Nam, Brandt, Bauer, Liu, Renna, Tosi, Sifakis, and Velten were able to image an object by its reflection off barely or even ‘non-retroreflective’ surfaces, basically, they captured the image of something casting a shadow on a wall, not just the shadow, mind you, the 3D object itself—and its motion.” *
Herald: “Tell me a bit more, but keep it simple.”
Adumbrate: “These people were able to make monochrome but still fuzzy videos that captured motion and distinguished objects in 3D in real time—well, with a one-second delay— around a corner. Still, even with a one-second delay, not bad, right? I mean, think about it. If you had an extra second’s warning as you approached the intersection, you could avoid the collision. Their technology, if wearable, would reduce the chances of that collision on the sidewalk at 34th and Broadway. Your device would show you someone’s coming simply by using light bouncing off a pole or newspaper dispenser on the sidewalk.”
Herald: “What’s this tech?”
Adumbrate: “NLOS, non-line-of-sight.”
Herald: “Oh! Like Einstein’s gravitational lensing without the gravity.”
Adumbrate: “Not really; there’s no bending of light, no refraction, but in a way yeah. Gravitational lensing lets us see a galaxy hidden by another galaxy. But there’s no light-bending going on in NLOS. It’s a matter of reflection from a low-reflective surface. The software takes what it can get from a reflection and images the object hidden around the corner.”
Herald: “I see the practicality. I could know what’s around the corner. No more surprises.”
Adumbrate: “You can also see why the military threw some money behind it. Pretty soon there will be no place to hide unless there isn’t a reflection. It would be an advantage in daytime and low light urban warfare. Police would want it also. But then, I suppose criminals could use it to ambush people. There’s always a potential downside to any tech, and as we know, if there’s a potentially malicious use, some bad guy will exploit it.”
Herald: “But now I see why you brought up the subject. Of course, but a tech that works with objects around corners doesn’t tell us where we’re headed very far into the future.”
Adumbrate: “No, that tech works only on the order of a few meters though the developers say it could extend farther with technical advancements. And no doubt it will become the next sought after tech for your smart phone. People will be holding up their phones as they approach corners because the camera systems will incorporate non-line-of-sight images. Paparazzi will hide to capture the antics of unsuspecting celebrities. People will take pictures of people they can’t directly see. Won’t be any hiding places, as I said.”
Herald: “But of course we really can’t see much into the future. It’s actually seeing what’s going on in the present, but out of direct line of sight. Tech can’t see into the future, can it?”
Adumbrate: “People think so. Thus, people make computer models of what can happen, and supposedly, with good modeling, produce a clear picture of an actual future is supposed to emerge. I guess that’s what the climate modelers and city planners are supposed to see. We’ve always been obsessed with seeing the future, thus soothsayers, fortune tellers, forecasters, the whole lot of predictors, including Harold Camping who erroneously predicted the end of the world several times. And back to those climate modelers upon whom all those politicians in Glasgow followed, can’t anyone learn the lesson that the future of a complex world is just as complex as the present world? After thousands of years of failed soothsaying, people still believe they can produce accurate 3D constructions of the future. Generation after generation has to learn that all such ‘seeing around the corner of time’ usually yields an image as fuzzy as the non-line-of-sight images that Nam’s group produces. Think of what all those past climate models told us about temperature and sea level, predictions that were close range, on the order of twenty years, from say 2000 to 2020. Seeing around the corner through models hasn’t worked very well because, like the guy you hypothetically bumped into at 34th and Broadway, his individual future couldn’t be known. Remember all those dire predictions about the effects of global warming that have as yet to become reality? And remember the specific predictions and projections? The past failures at seeing the future, seeing around the corner of time, now make me think of the other kinds of predictions, such as the ones voters make when they buy into the promises made during political campaigns. Yeah, I wish I could see round the corner of time and down the road to future bad decisions, not just for me personally, but for the country, for the sake of…”
Herald: “I’m not going there. How could you turn a conversation on non-line-of-sight imaging technology into something about climate or economics or whatever?”
Adumbrate: “I want what you mentioned on a different scale. I don’t want to run into someone at the intersections of my life, of course. I don’t need collisions with people hurrying off to some special future they believe only they can see. You know, if you hadn’t had that hypothetical collision and the guy made his interview and got the job, he might have been the catalyst to destroy, and not to build, his company. I just don’t want to crash into a group that can’t see around the corner to avoid hurting me or millions of others, so rushed are they and so obsessed with what they believe they see that they rely on the blurriest of images. The complex Earth systems that interact to shape climate are like the complex economic vicissitudes that interact to drive the stock market up or down, that drive market crashes. Many images of the future are blurry. They have only a few pixels. They might reveal general shapes, but not sharply defined objects.”
Herald: “I agree; we might be able to develop a see-around-the-corner tech, but humans will never have a clear picture of the future. We’ll always just have good guesses and bad guesses. I know, for example, that at noon at 34th and Broadway, there will be a crowd rushing who knows where with collisions likely at the corners. That’s a relatively easy thing to predict. But maybe those modelers believe they have a good chance of seeing the future based on big numbers like noontime crowds.”
Adumbrate: “Except the future isn’t just about the normal crowds. It’s about the unexpected complexities. Construction crews doing work on the sidewalk change the traffic flow; spills make pedestrians alter where they step. And to use your example, I’ll say that just as there was an avalanche of events after your hypothetical run-in with a stranger on his way to an interview, so the little decisions—and the big ones—that politicians are making today based on previously faulty models of economics and climate will also result in an avalanche of unintended consequences and bad results.”
Herald: “So, then, what’s the best we can hope for?”
Adumbrate: “I guess just seeing a fuzzy image of something that we would discover in a second or so when we rounded the corner. I guess what we can hope for is that we can react to avoid collisions.”
Herald: “But surely, there are cues and clues about what’s to come.”
Adumbrate: “Some. But remember that complexity abounds. People and planets are known for doing the unexpected. Ask anyone who lives near a volcano or in an earthquake zone. Ask anyone who thought American economy was great before a pandemic struck and a politician shut off oil independence. Sure, around the corner is the next eruption or earthquake, but exactly when and how intense is a different matter, a matter that counts. A slight bump into someone on a sidewalk at an intersection is different from a knockdown, and a warning of a few meters and a second isn’t always enough to prevent a disaster of large proportions.”
Herald: "As I said, maybe all we need to see is around the closest corner. Maybe all we will ever really see is just around the closest corner."
Note:
*Nam, J.H., Brandt, E., Bauer, S. et al. Low-latency time-of-flight non-line-of-sight imaging at 5 frames per second. Nat Commun 12, 6526 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-26721-x ;
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