Mirror Worlds Revisited

In his book “Mirror Worlds”, published in 1991, the DLD friend describes websites, blogging, video streaming, tablets, e-books, and search engines – long before it’s time! More importantly, he anticipated the consequences on social interaction and patterns, even describing online communities that work just as Facebook and Twitter do today. Given the 20th anniversary of "Mirror Worlds", there is once more the urgence to pay tribute to the outstanding work by the "Lord of the Cloud". 

 

 

Basically, a Mirror World is a representation of the real world in digital form. They are connected to real models and are closely related to Augmented Reality (AR).  Still, it is an autonomous manifestation of digitalized reality. These „Mirror Worlds“ aren’t „ mere information services. They are places you can ‘stroll around’, meeting and electronically conversing with friends or random passers-by. If you find something you don’t like, post a note; you’ll soon discover whether anyone agrees with you,” he wrote in this publication. Google Earth has not been launched until 2005!

 

 

In 1997 he and his colleague Eric Freeman formed a company, also called Mirror Worlds, to develop an approach called “lifestreams”- a graphical user interface intended to replace the windows and files of conventional computer desktops with an elegant chronological stream of digital objects. Sounds quite a bit like Facebook’s Timeline, doesn’t it?

 

 

In 2008, the company – then owned by a hedge fund - argued that these patents were being infringed by several Apple products - including the Spotlight Search, Cover Flow and Time Machine. In 2010, a district court in Texas found Apple guilty and awarded Mirror Worlds a breath-taking $625.5m in damages (more info here). But in April 2011, a federal judge overturned the verdict, even while upholding the Mirror Worlds patents. David Gelernter thus found himself at war with Steve Jobs, one of the few figures in the industry who shared his views on the importance of technology being servant to users.

 

 

Given his track record for predicting the future, there is urgent faith in his visionary powers. Thus, the real question is: What is David Gelernter working on next? What does he foresee to come next in computer science, mirrored in his crystal bowl? Find it out yourself and read more about his big milestone to the field of network computing (Linda) as well as his focus on aesthetic and social factors here.