Hologram

So I guess there’s been a bit of a furor over this hologram of Tupac performing at some music festival over the past weekend. From what I’ve read, it has created rumors of Tupac’s faked death and that he’s alive living in a mansion somewhere and this “hologram” was really him. This we know to be untrue. Tupac is dead.

I liked Tupac. I thought as an artist and creative person he had a lot going for him. It was unfortunate that his death in a hail of bullets didn’t galvanize a culture against that very gun violence that took his life. But I digress, the hologram seems to have a lot of people freaked out and now there are thoughts of using the same technology to send a holographic Michael Jackson out on tour. This has people very shaky for some reason.  This doesn’t bother nerds like me.

In fact, we’ve been waiting for holographic technology to be super awesome ever since the first episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation in which Data and Commander Riker meet on the Holodeck. So a holographically projected Tupac is a step forward to a vacation on the moon without ever leaving Earth. I greedily wait for those times.

It’s an amazing technology that has been a long time coming. I remember a western gun fight holographic video game at Great America Amusement Park many years ago. (Maybe the 1980's). There were teeny cowboys on a very small screen, projected holograms, that had little gunfight showdowns. It was $1.50 to play and was over way too quickly. But I was amazed by it and though we’d see holographic style games and TV shows in just a couple of years. It was a pretty impressive thing for the 20^th Century. However, it took us until the 21^st Century to get something close to being interactive.  Who would have thought it would have come in the form of deceased rapper?

I’m glad that we’re finally on the way though. It’ll will be very interesting to see what they use this technology for next. I know CNN used it a little bit during the Presidential election coverage but they made it lame.  

So I applaud the resurrected holographic Tupac. He’d done more dead than most of us have ever done alive.