Croquet: A 30-Year Old Cosmic Dream of Augmented Reality, Collaboration, and 5G.
Although Doug Engelbart’s vision of collaboration was demoed in 1968 by showing two mouse pointers on a screen that were being controlled by two people in different locations, the possibilities of collaboration are much more than what Doug demonstrated. True collaboration is the ability for any number of users to manipulate any kind of objects, as well as the system itself, in real-time.
Imagine two scientists, on opposite sides of the planet, each seeing a holographic simulation of Earth forming in front of them, through their their AR glasses. One of the scientists slides a holographic slider that shows the progression of heat patterns over the last 100 years. They enter into a discussion, and when they mention Greta Thunberg, she suddenly appears as a hologram in front of each of the scientists, and she joins the conversation. Soon, more scientists and researchers from around the world join the augmented experience, and within minutes, climate thinkers from all corners of the Earth are in the conversation, and it turns into a talk by Greta. Half an hour later, people and ideas have mingled, and people start splitting up into their own groups to talk about ideas. Then Maria Montessori, one of the greatest thinkers in education, appears in one of the rooms. She seems as real as she was 100 years ago. Young children join the conversation, and within days, millions of people from around the world take part in working on one of the most pressing problems of our time, climate change. Together, they customize tools created by others, and create new ones themselves. They have access to the core of the system, giving them unlimited freedom to imagine new ideas and bring them to life quickly. The system is the paintbrush, the augmented world is the art, and the people are the artists. The network is powered by 5G technology, allowing these huge streams of data to create a frictionless experience for an unlimited number of people.
This is what collaborative computing is about. It’s not an incremental improvement, it’s many orders of magnitude of improved communication for learning, working, playing, thinking, and living collaboratively. It’s a way of bringing civilization into synchronization, like an orchestra playing a concert hall. It will turn civilization into a well-oiled machine, capable of living in harmony, and thriving in intelligence.
The Croquet dream started in 1990 when Alan Kay and David A. Smith were frustrated with the state of operating systems. Having gone through several iterations since then, Croquet is now a powerful platform and service for the development and deployment of live apps and games. It’s amazingly easy to create “what you see is what I see” applications, creating perfectly shared experiences.
Traditional platforms make it remarkably hard and expensive to write, deploy and operate collaborative apps and games. Infrastructure performance limitations and cost are severely limiting mass deployment, and Croquet makes it extremely easy and totally affordable to build apps and games.
This might not seem as much today, but Croquet’s foundations have been built for the AR collaborative future. Every AR application will need to be collaborative and will require “what you see is what I see.” If shared applications are unable to do that, then there is no way we will be able to trust the experience as a viable basis for communicating ideas.
These rich AR experiences mean that there will be huge amounts of data being constantly streamed across Earth –– orders of magnitude more than what we consume today. And this is where 5G comes in, by creating a global wireless network that will allow these experiences to happen.
Croquet’s vision of being “the engine for the next computer vehicle” requires long-term thinking about how systems need to be designed for collaborative augmented reality experiences, and this is what they have been thinking of for the last 30 years. While the Croquet SDK is the culmination of this thinking, it is just the first step towards the augmented reality collaborative future.
This future is also about building a new Internet, which will force the entire industry to build operating systems and products in totally new ways. Adding new code on top of giant pyramids of decades-old code to build these systems will not work.
The printing revolution lasted 500 years, and so will the computer revolution. We are only 50 years in, and have 450 years left for computers to evolve and mature. We have barely scratched the surface of the future we’re inventing. The best way to take part in this revolution is to recognize the people and companies who are thinking about it in ways that make sense, and then join them on their journey, in whatever small we can. This is a collective journey for humanity, and there will be an abundance of universes for everyone to create, own and thrive in. A mentality of abundance is necessary if you want be inspired by this future, or any other future for that matter. Only then, will a universe of possibilities open up, and give you the energy to work on these grand visions of the future, which were born many decades ago. All we have to do is recognize them, and work on bringing them to life.
If you want to build your ideas with the Croquet SDK, you must want to shift your context of thinking. You must want to understand the story, where it started, and where it’s going. You must want to take part in working on something with real purpose, and you will find yourself slowly lifting yourself into an augmented form of intelligence, surrounded by others who are trying to do the same, for themselves and for each other. While everybody else is thinking incrementally, Croquet is about invention that the industry has been desperate for. Their ship hasn’t sailed yet, so grab a front row seat. It’ll be a rewarding journey that will change the way you think, if you let it. It will rip off the veneer of what you thought was real in the industry, and it will reveal to you a deeper understanding of what technology is, what a computer is, and what invention is. You will realize the cosmic size of this dream, and it will turn you into an explorer. As David A. Smith said to me: “We are all fellow travelers exploring the future, blazing a path for others to follow.”
Thank you
Thank you to David A. Smith, Alan Kay and David P. Reed for our inspiring conversations, and for sharing your visions of the future with me.
Croquet
- Croquet Website
- The Croquet Project Wikipedia page
- Croquet — A Collaboration System Architecture (David A. Smith, Alan Kay, Andreas Raab, David P. Reed, 2003)
- Croquet — A Menagerie of New User Interfaces (David A. Smith, Andreas Raab, David P. Reed, Alan Kay, 2004)
- Why AR Will Win — And Why it Matters How it Will Win (David A. Smith, 2019)
History of Computing Ideas
- Man Computer Symbiosis (J. C. R. Licklider, 1960)
- Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework (Doug Engelbart, 1962)
- The Computer as a Communication Device (J.C.R. Licklider and Robert W. Taylor, 1968)
- Naming and Synchronization in a Decentralized Computer System (David P. Reed, 1979)
