Particularly in technology, “the” new kid on the block is to be admired and loved. We like knowing about the new kid so do the media like reporting them for the audience. OpenAI is arguably “the” technology story of this year. The recent ousting and reinstating of its CEO Sam Altman in OpenAI has added to the storyline. Just before Thanksgiving, there came a failed coup in the boardroom. We are fortunate to live in these modern days where no-one dies in the process in a coup. Being THE new kid, there has been more forgiveness and relatively few punish the company as a result of the coup.
We unconsciously ask for more from the other players such as Google or Amazon or many others “once-the”. These other players now belong to the “one of the” club. Last week Google announced its latest, if not its greatest, multimodal AI: Gemini. Surprisingly, the magical six-minute demo “Hands on with Demo : interacting with multi-modal AI” has attracted quite a bit of criticism. It was a concern that the demo is not a real-time demo of how the actual multimodal AI product behaves (yet). Rather tweaks here and there to help the narration and to show what is possible with the technology. When was the last marketing demo not piecing things together to make a more impressive narrative?
Transition happens when one changes from “the” to “one of the”, or from “one of the” to “the”.
I particularly worry about potential transitions of the US being “the” superpower to the possibility of “one of the”. Will there be more “wars” to resist “the” to “one of the”?
I particularly feel these transitions as the years go by : transition from being “the” most important person to the children to “one of the”; transition from “the” youngest in a group to “one of the”; transition from “one of the” oldest to “the” oldest in a group.
Mastering these transitions makes life good. Mastering these transitions among the geopolitics make the world more peaceful.
In this book Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, the characters need to face with many many transitions.
Set in the backdrop of the computer game industry from the 90s, the novel weaves in the novel of three co-founders creatively designing, coding and producing computer games. Not only do they creatively produce unique games for the gamers, they find themselves needing to creatively live through the different lowlights, and highlights along the way. There is always a new life after the “game over ”, as long as you keep playing.
You’ll enjoy the read of this beautiful story about growing up, love and friendship, whether you play or create computer games.
oliviatamccue 