Living Worlds
A San Francisco park in summer 1967, volunteers serving free food, someone playing guitar, painted wooden houses beyond.

Age · 1960–2000

The electric century

A free kitchen, the Moon, a shop of new machines, a phone line.

Observed

Evidence

Places, dates and measured rates, from sources.

Inferred

Parameters

The rates and structures fitted to that evidence.

Simulated

Behaviour

Lives stepped month by month under those rates.

Generated

Outcome

Each life's story, told as a composite, never a real person.

Meanwhile

4 worlds, side by side.

Each keeps its own time. None is ranked above another.

A San Francisco park in summer 1967, volunteers serving free food, someone playing guitar, painted wooden houses beyond. San Francisco, summer 1967Free KitchenWhoever comes is fed. Neighbours on a Rio rooftop near midnight crowded around a black-and-white television showing the first steps on the Moon. Rio de Janeiro, 20 July 1969Moon NightEveryone watches at the same time. Akihabara in 1984 at dusk, electronics stacked to the pavement, glowing shop signs, shoppers and students. Tokyo, 1984Electric TownEverything new is tried in the shop first. A suburban house at night in 1998, a lit den window with a family computer, a teenager online. America, 1998Dial-UpThe whole world is one phone call away.
A double-hulled voyaging canoe with pandanus sails on the open Pacific at dusk.

Which world will you live in?

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