Imagination Age

From Otherland, Mountain of Black Glass, by Tad Williams:

Dulcie Anwin's thoughts as she waits to land in Sydney for the first time, after working in a virtual office mimicking Sydney for months:

     "That's modern life, though, isn't it? she told herself as the pilot announced that they were finally ready to land. Our lives aren't even about doing real things, most of the time. We think and talk about people we've never met, pretend to visit places we've never actually been to, discuss things that are just names as though they were as real as rocks or animals or something. Information Age? Hell, it's the Imagination Age. We're living in or own minds.
     No, she decided as the plane began its steep descent, really we're living in other people's minds."

How many hours do we spend in other realities? I don't have cable, so I don't get sucked into sitcoms or streaming news. I do have a PS3 that we use for an entertainment system, and this past Sunday I used it for a Star War-a-thon. I dissolved into the landscapes and vivid imagination of George Lucas for hours. I pondered questions like: Did Leah have kids? Who was Darth Vadar's father, and could that be a plot point somewhere? Were Luke and Leah really the balance to the Force? I cried for nonexistent characters, was blown away by combat that never really happened, and held my breath for plots that came out of someone's mind. Is this a bad thing?

I don't think so.

Reaching into our minds and exploring new lands, lives, and emotions can only deepen our personal understandings of self and experience. It is in the search of foreign landscapes in books, and wearing different shoes in the characters in epic stories that we sometimes stretch ourselves. I faithfully watched Star Trek, because I wanted to go where no “man” had gone before. Each new experience and encounter challenged me to think about “What would I do in that situation?” While there's a reason we turn off our television and turn up the music, I still believe there can be magic in the silver screen as much as my old warn fairy tale books.

Today I was reminded of childhood imaginings, and the magic they evoke. My oldest has been fascinated with Peter Pan and the movie Hook. He wears one of my winter gloves to indicate the missing hand that Peter Pan took from him. He will get his revenge and he wants me to be his ship mate! We danced on the pillows this morning, we were dancing pirates ,“magicing” the bad guys away. Do my children need prefabricated plots to fuel their fertile minds? Of course not. But, there are seeds everywhere.

While these days I normally wrestle with musty theologians, it wasn't long ago that I was putting time into a cubicle. I worked in finance for a number of years. While I enjoyed the experience of creating financial models and visioning how things might happen - it was more the struggle of ethics and how money is spent that turned me away from that path. Speaking of imagination, how does one call an investment ethical? How is that determined or measured? It is not only in stories and plots that we move and live. It is in the workings of financial models and experimental physics, the motion of perfect tires, and the lone protestor before a collumn of tanks.

In the far scapes of Second Life and online communities, we explore identity, communication, and the stretches of relationship. It is the fertile fields of late night games,stories,and movies that we move beyond the ordinary. It is in visioning science, stretching molecules, imagining solar power that we move beyond the ordinary. When we step beyond our doorstep, into the the extraordinary the possibilities are waiting. There is enchantment right off your doorstep, if you will get off the couch. Far more valuable than any $4 dollar fuel is the power of the flexible and courageous minds of those brave enough to imagine.

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