Foreword
Avatar Dreams
by Harry Doc Kloor
This anthology started last year, but its roots actually began many decades ago.
Growing up, I had the good fortune of having a mother who had written a science fiction novel, My Beloved Troshanus, while carrying me. Some would say I had science fiction in my blood; certainly, a steady diet of it since childhood. My desire to create avatars was initiated by two books: Poul Anderson’s Call Me Joe and Ben Bova’s novel, The Winds of Altair. I was eight or nine, and don’t recall which book I read first—but I became fascinated by the idea that one could inhabit another body. I was attracted to the idea that humans could transfer their mind and consciousness across vast distances and be somewhere else; to obtain a new body—a better body perhaps, or just a different one.
As a child, I envisioned a world where we could move instantly around the planet—even the stars (not grasping the limitations put on us by the speed of light), by moving our consciousness into robotic and android bodies. The idea of being able to go anywhere, become anyone and do anything was very freeing, opening my eyes to the infinite potential available, were we to have unlimited bodies.
During my teenage years, this appetite for science fiction grew, as did my love of science. I excelled in science and technology and even went so far as to build a simple computer via a kit requiring hexadecimal programming, which proved to be a royal pain in the ass. I quickly realized how enormous the gap was between science and science fiction. Fortunately, after a period of disappointment in the limitations of current technology, I came to understand that computers grew in power exponentially, and when interfaced with other technologies, they grew exponentially in capability. We were a long way from being able to build avatars, but given exponential growth, I thought we could achieve it during my lifetime, and was hell-bent on being the one to ultimately create them.
In the decades following that childhood dream, I spent my time building up the necessary skills and relationships needed to create an actual avatar. In my twenties, I shifted my thoughts away from the idea of transferring my actual consciousness into a robotic body, realizing we have something I like to call Awareness Consciousness (AC). AC, which is driven by your senses, is what makes you think you’re in your body. Simply put, because you see, hear, talk, touch, move, smell and taste through your body, you have the perception that you are in it. Shift these senses elsewhere, and part of your awareness consciousness shifts as well. This is experienced in virtual reality all the time now, and to a far lesser extent, when watching a movie or having a video chat. The more senses you shift and the more actions are done at a distance in a natural, organic way, the more your AC shifts.
It is far easier to shift AC than your actual consciousness. This approach makes avatars possible now, versus waiting a much longer time for science to figure out how to transfer your consciousness into a machine. Now, mind you, it still requires a whole host of exponential technologies to create working commercial avatars—from robotics, haptics, partial artificial intelligence, IOT (internet of things), VR/MR/AR, deep machine learning, high-bandwidth wireless communication, etc. Thirty years ago, this technology was still in its infancy, so I had to bide my time and let exponential technology do what it does best—mature.
Flash forward to May 2016: Peter Diamandis asked me if I would come back to XPRIZE for the purpose of taking over the ANA team, one of nine teams competing to create a new XPRIZE. The team’s prize designs would be voted on at the Annual Visioneering Summit at the end of September. The ANA team had been struggling with a molecular teleportation concept, which wasn’t working. Normally, I don't return to organizations I’ve helped launch. Having been in the original founding team of five that created and shepherded the Ansari XPRIZE, I initially said no. But if you know Peter, no is not an answer he accepts, so he countered with an irresistible offer—freedom to change the prize concept to whatever I wanted. So, I agreed to become the Bold Innovator, and changed the prize concept to Avatar XPRIZE.
Marcus Shingles, having taken over the CEO position, had the brilliant idea of allowing sponsors to fund the nine teams in the development of their XPRIZE-worthy concepts. Our team started three months behind, with four left to go. We were up against teams proposing prizes on cancer and ALS that traditionally get a lot of “heartstring” votes. And the concept of avatars seemed fantastical. Turning this around seemed unlikely. But I was fortunate to have Ione Istrate and MacKenzie Ward, XPRIZE fellows, Brandon Alvis my editor, Amy Collins and Seth Rowanwood my artist team, and Jun Suto and Tammy Stockfish, XPRIZE staff, Ray Kurzweil, Anousheh Ansari, Neil Jackcobstein, advisor to help design the prize, as well as my film, TV, VR and animation friends to help explain it. Together, we created a series of kick-ass videos, and brought to the USA two Japanese robotic systems to demo the concept of avatars. We figured we had a fighting chance.
September 29, 2016 arrived, we did our stage presentations, and pretty much everything that could go wrong, did. None of our videos played, the sound system for us failed, but worst of all, the avatar concept fell flat. The next day, after the votes were tallied, we were running dead last.
So, we threw the playbook and four months of preparation out the window, shifting our approach away from canned presentations to interactive demos. This new approach included putting dozens of Visioneers into our demo robotic avatar, shifting each person’s awareness consciousness across the room into a robot. Among the 80 or so plus Visioneers whose AC we moved included Dean Kamen, Rod Roddenberry, Peter Diamandis, Anousheh Ansari, Pharrell Williams, and the Duchess of York. We also adapted our approach to explain on a personal level how the avatar systems worked and the impact they would have on the world.
Ultimately, the avatar system I envision consists of two systems. First, the avatar control unit—I like to call this the SOUL (Sensor Operation User Link) system—and the second, the actual Avatar Unit. The SOUL consists of a VR/audio system that enables you to see and hear through a robot. Then, a microphone system that enables you to speak through the robot, a haptic system that allows you to feel through the robot, and finally, a motion capture system that enables you to move naturally and have those movements translate into robotic motion. The avatar is the robotic system that has all the counterparts to the SOUL, allowing you to move, touch, see, hear, and talk through the robot. The technologies required have all evolved to the point that integrating and adapting them will lead to commercial avatars in the next decade. Keep in mind, with this type of system, you shift your AC, and it takes zero training time to use the avatar, because it takes no time to know how to use a surrogate body.
The Visioneers initially thought our avatar presentation was about travel, but travel is only a small part of what avatars will be used for. Avatars will impact every part of our lives and create the next golden age of mankind by democratizing opportunity and access. Since the dawn of man, we have concentrated into cities, and those cities have had greater opportunities and access to better resources and talent. Public concentration has also led some to greater poverty, escalating crime, and infrastructure problems. But in the Age of Avatars, where you live will no longer limit your access to where you work, play, learn, or contribute. A doctor will treat patients anywhere in the world, a teacher can be brought into any class room, and at the same time, a worker need no longer leave his country to find work opportunities—they can work one day in Tokyo, the next in New York, all from the comfort of their home—regardless of where that home may be located. The limitations of locality will vanish, and be replaced with the abundance of the entire global community.
Many of the prize concepts that were competing sought to solve one of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/); these goals range from ending poverty and providing quality education to better health and work opportunities. The SDGs are difficult to solve, but not because there is not enough money. About a trillion dollars a year is now given to those in need. Nor is it lack of know-how or equipment; there is plenty of that. The scarcity is in the distribution of skilled people. There are not enough doctors, engineers, technicians, teachers, or experts who are willing to go where they are needed, and for good reason: they have their own lives and problems. Through avatars, this is solved because skilled people need not expend days of travel time to reach and return from remote lands where they can at last lend a hand. Instead, from the comfort of their home or office, they could donate a day once a year, or a few hours each month—as an avatar. There is plenty of skilled labor willing to help if we erased the burden and danger of travel. I envision a billion avatars or more across the world—with a UN Charter that gives operators access to the necessary bandwidth to operate their avatars, in exchange for donating the use of the avatar once a week for social good.
Avatars will not only be effective tools in solving the SDGs, they will bring the world closer together, literally and figuratively, while preserving diversity. Avatars will have partial AI (an AI sub-consciousness), allowing you to speak and understand any language, including its context. It’s considerably more difficult to start a war when coworkers, teachers, doctors, and friends live all around the world. Before conflicts overheat and melt down into war, people will step in as avatars to safely interpret what is going on—a worldly deterrent to the escalation of conflict.
And yes, for those of you who are already dreaming bigger—humanoid avatars are just the start—I see the Age of Avatars filled not only with a billion-plus humanoid Avatars, but countless other forms, big and small, real and fantastic. Personally, I am looking forward to my own Dragon avatar, as well as a microscopic one so I can swim through the human body. And the earth is just the beginning—in the Age of Avatars will exist throughout our solar system—albeit controlled from nearby locations until we can transfer full consciousness into them and back. And while we will begin with a combination of systems from VR to motion capture, eventually we will evolve to brain interfaces that provide a purer experience. But for now, I’ll look forward to the first avatars being simple humanoid robots that I control via a SOUL system.
All these factors were presented, and ultimately led the Visioneers to vote heartily for the ANA Avatar XPRIZE to become one of three prize concepts voted ready to launch. But being ready to launch and launching are often two different things, which is why I also convinced ANA to pledge, on stage, $22M to fund the prize purse and operations of the ANA Avatar XPRIZE. One year later, at the following Visioneering event, on October 7, they fulfilled that pledge, delivering on stage the check for $22M. This prize will formally be announced to the world on March 12, 2018 at SXSW. It is the first new prize since 2015.
For me, this anthology is the fitting way to begin the Avatar Revolution (go to avatarrevolution.com to help bring about the platinum age of avatars); and the perfect way to announce the launch of Beyond Imagination—an avatar company founded by myself and a league of extraordinary luminaries that will bring generic robotic avatars to the entire world to enable anyone, to travel anywhere in three minutes or less, to erase the limitation of locality, to solve the SDG’s, to bring prosperity and abundance to all. (Go to beyondimaginationco.com to learn more.)
This anthology, the company Beyond Imagination, and the Avatar XPrize mark the first shots of the Avatar Revolution. A revolution that I will continue to lead until a billion plus avatars exist throughout our solar system. I invite all of you to join, so that we together, can bring about the Age of Avatars.