NAKED CITY: HOLY HOLOGRAMS – IT’S ELVIS!
You might remember during the last American election some of the large news providers like CNN experimented with holograms to miraculously pluck voters from the street and install them in their main broadcasting studio. It was an attempt to democratise the media but it mostly looked like a scene out of Star Trek as concerned citizens were beamed up electronically from thousands of miles away.
While the voter illusion could only be achieved on a TV screen, an American company has now devised technology whereby holograms can appear live on stage and recreate many of those great entertainers who are no longer with us. Already they have conjured a virtual Elvis and a similarly simulated Tupac Shakur so lifelike they have convinced audiences they’re witnessing the Second Coming.
It’s surely a phenomenon that can only get bigger as hundreds of dead pop stars and rappers are resurrected electronically and fill stadium after stadium with performances that are remarkably lifelike. And why focus entirely on the departed? With hologram versions of the real thing bands such as AC/DC and Metallica could retire to their tax-free havens and simply put multiple hologram versions of their shows into every country on the planet.
Once the entertainment arena is saturated the technology could be applied to all manner of political scenarios with literally hundreds of holographic Obamas and Romneys campaigning simultaneously across the country, spruiking pre-recorded rhetoric, and remotely controlled to kiss babies and embrace the converted. No worries about security here as not even al-Qaeda would bother taking pot shots at a hologram.
It does, of course, have a sinister side and had the North Koreans picked up on the new technology we may have had a hologram version of Kim Jong-il, still waving to the adoring masses long after he had died – a puppet of the sinister Stalinist party machine.
When you really think about it, the technology has the potential to be terrifying and were these holographic images to be programmed with some kind of artificial intelligence, resembling the original personality – anything could happen. We have all been on alert for the modern-day Antichrist, both believers and atheists alike, and it seems the door is now open for some dastardly tech heads to unleash such a person – albeit as an army of holograms.
The nightmare vision of thousands of Rolf Harris’s, rampaging across the UK, has already been forewarned in an episode of The Goodies and laugh if you like, but it’s a portent of the digitally manipulated apocalypse that awaits us all. In the meantime, however, it does seem that Elvis is back and there’s plenty of time to rock’n’roll before we start the final countdown to Armageddon.
