Letters from the Future are archeological fragments of a time to come. The future is like quantum theory, all possibilities existing simultaneously until one collapses into an event.

These fragments are both.

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Letter 1

Scholarship in the age of infinite subroutines

There was a time when scholars wrote and thought. Today, in this world of infinite subroutines and deeper and deeper machine learning, scholarship has become algorithmic and genetic. At this moment in our academic history, iterations of thoughts, ideas and structures appear mysteriously, triggered by scholars but created by the sentience of non-sentient machines. A great deal of fuss was made over the arbitrariness of ideation — trouble which would be outsourced to technologies of reimagining. Scholarship now involves perusing libraries of iteration and variation. Critique lives within the same architecture as the search for the prime number…

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Letter 2

Humanity in the Age of Machines: The Biosphere of Ideas

Just as the biosphere stands above the world of nonliving matter, so an “abstract kingdom” rises above the biosphere. The denizens of this kingdom? Ideas. Ideas have retained some of the properties of organisms. Like them, they tend to perpetuate their structure and to breed; they too can fuse, recombine, segregate their content; indeed they too can evolve…

James Gleick

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Letter 3

The University at the Singularity

Structures impose thought patterns, perceptions and understandings. The historical structures of our institutions create the proverbial box from which one has a limited number of mental frameworks from which to perceive the world. These frameworks have been extremely successful; they have brought great wealth, great ideas, and untold riches. But the Anthropocene is giving birth to a very strange new world, in which our fundamental notions of what we are, of who we are, and how we understand the world have limited effectiveness.

How can we survive and thrive? How can we reinvent education to understand and prosper in this fantastic new world?

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Collection 1

Pandemic: 2025, 5 years after the Pandemic Lockdown    

This is 2025. The pandemic and its confinement have lasted 18 months. These are the letters from that future.

By John Mac Master

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Music

‍My dear Timothy Alois,

I hope this finds you well in Halle, and that those close to you remain healthy.

After 18 months of confinement here in Montréal which ended about Sept 2021, physical distancing was relaxed to a great extent, step by step in stages. There were the same flare ups of Second and Third waves as you had in Germany, and so many more deaths. But things seem a bit better now, and I think we are also more reconciled to possibly dying from the damn Corona! So here we find ourselves in 2025 and I am taking stock of what “classical” music feels like here. I’m curious to hear how things are there!

So many musician friends did not survive the The Lockdown. Sorry! I don’t mean that more musicians died than the general population, just that they died financially. Self-employed performers of all genres did not receive the generous wage replacements that you did in Germany, or in France. So they were forced to look for other work to manage
expenses. With restaurants, bars and cafés closed, the usual “between-gigs” economy dried up – and folks started looking for other work they could do online. Teaching music was an obvious choice, but there was a glut of teachers, and not much money around for folks to ‘indulge’ themselves in lessons. Some turned to administrative jobs they could do on-line; I know a couple who became paralegals. More than a few stayed on at food stores where they had re-stocked shelves during The Lockdown. When the minimum wage was raised to $22 for essential workers, along with benefits and 6 weeks vacation, (along the Danish model) – some stayed on, and eventually moved into management. After 18 months of not practicing daily and performing regularly, some didn’t want to go back to performing – and many more couldn’t.

Early on there was a lot of sharing of house performances online. It was a kind of a railing against The Emergency, The Accident that was forcing us to stay at home for two weeks, then a few more weeks…. then months. The quality of what we could produce in “art’ music at home, alone, with a remote connection to someone playing somewhere else – just wasn’t satisfying to most musicians. And frankly not to audiences either! Why listen to a tenor at home, singing into a laptop, when you could stream the Vienna Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera or really, anything you wanted – for free!

The level of depression in performers was something I had not expected, and it broke my heart. There was more art and entertainment being consumed online on platforms like Netflix, Medici etc. than ever (not that artists were being paid any extra for it!!). There were some valiant efforts to create entertainment on digital platforms, and some folks were satisfied with that. There was a lot of pretty creative stuff too. But I find it more impressive than moving; intellectually engaging perhaps….sometimes not even that, though.

But most soon realized that what they missed was LIVE performance, in a GATHERING where you could have a collective experience and often a cathartic one. For the performers it was the joy of creating in groups, of the energy shared, of the risks taken in a moment in time! For the audiences (and I am talking here of art music, but also theatre, even comedy shows, popular music) it was their experience of the risk of live-performance, the high-wire act so-to-speak. I confess I had no interest in watching performance online – it was not at all the same experience as being in a hall -the sound was different, flatter, with less nuance, vibrancy – less alive! Of course, that’s it – less alive, sterile somehow….boring. You’ve performed as long as I have, I’m not telling you anything you don’t know!

Five years on, it feels a bit like Spring, now! There are more public concerts every month, and gradually larger gatherings have been permitted. The greatest change though is the solidarity in performers within professional associations (that are unions in all but name!) They have been able to secure something like a Basic Universal Income from the government for artists based on their past earnings, and the engagements being offered them going forward. When public performances started up again in 2023, originally the producers and engagers (those left standing after the plague of bankruptcies!) were offering fees that were lower than anything we had ever seen! Concert fees had dropped precipitously after the 2008 recession and had been just getting back to something like the pre-2008 level when The Lockdown hit in 2020. So engagers were offering fees that meant that artists were subsidizing the performances (more-so than ever!).

I was amazed to see that performers collectives were able to move the government here in Québec to adopt models that were more like the European ones. (I think that is because Culture is an easier ‘sell’ here than in Ontario!) For the first time ever here, we saw opera companies offer full year contracts to solo singers, like the ensembles we know so well in Europe! Sure, no superstars would be singing the big roles, all the roles were taken from the Ensemble of house- singers. But that meant many more performances for singers, mostly Québecois and Canadian who live here (or came back home!), raise their families here, and become part of the civic and cultural fabric. They may make less over the year than they did when they jetted around – but there is better life-work balance, none of the huge expenses to travel and sing “away” - and many tell me they are happier. They also tell me they now have some artistic influence in the companies they work for, since they have become part of the family instead of occasional visitors. And the small local orchestras of folks who were underemployed freelancers who now have an annual salary – they have been a surprising success! The idea of having them also provide concerts and teach instrumental music lessons in primary and secondary schools was brilliant – and the initial curiosity has turned into a real love in many students and parents alike. In Trois-Rivieres, I heard of three generations in one family taking lessons! (The grandfather is an old friend – he told me that he wanted to be ready to play chamber music with his children and grandchildren when the next pandemic hits!)

Not all the concerts after The Lockdown were great: it took organizers and performers alike some time to find their footing. But what I noticed right away was more JOY! The players in the symphony orchestras were eager and energized, I hope it lasts! And the soloists are beatific with smiles and real excitement!

In any case, we are moving forward. I don’t know if we can say in retrospect that “Ça va bien aller” was true or not.

But I am glad for the feeling of Spring, of things opening up again, for Beauty shared in public, with others. I’m glad to that I am not so consumed with work the way I was before The Lockdown – Patricia and I have a bit more balance, we’ve kept the cocktail hour as a pretty well daily celebration, and we go out to concerts with a bit of a glow on!

Much love to you and Mike, stay well, take good care of each other… and let me know how things are there!

- John

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Society

Looking back at the coronavirus pandemic, one might be forgiven for thinking it was just a temporary hiccough – because five years later, not much change is visible on the surface.

Yes, people spend more time with friends and loved ones, as the quarantine paradoxically led people to go out of their way to reconnect with people they usually only saw once or twice per year. Yes, online and on-demand services became more commonplace, more people started working from home, and online community events became popular amongst a repressed and impatient youth. And yes, the anti-vaccine and other skeptics of the medical system became significantly less vocal when the SARS-CoV-2 virus was almost entirely eradicated, as a vast majority of people became immunized in the largest
coordinated medical effort our species has ever known – after all, we’d all just spent 17 months in quarantine anxiously hanging on to every word that reasonable public health officials and researchers uttered, and everyone wanted nothing more than to comply with the government-mandated vaccination drive, to ease their anxiety by protecting themselves, and to return to normal at long last. But despite these visible changes, and several others besides them, it looks quite close to business as usual. People still go to school and graduate (or not), get a job or get fired, get married or divorced, have kids or abstain from parenthood, go out or stay in. Daily life is not so different now than before the pandemic.

But below the surface, things are not quite as they used to be. The pandemic exposed serious flaws in various countries’ public health systems, emergency preparedness systems, emergency response and support systems, and various other systems that were not suited to a catastrophe of this magnitude, be it sudden or foreseeable. This led to a massive push on the part of epidemiologists, policy analysts, defense analysts, and academics and the educated public more broadly – a push to investigate our public systems more closely for potential weaknesses that could be actively exploited by malicious state actors, or could passively result in crises through various circumstances and complex system interactions. Systems engineering and systems modeling professionals have become some of the most in-demand people in all levels of government, and some changes are becoming apparent even in daily life (although political philosophers and political scientists are already warning of the dangers of this new, model-driven social engineering mindset, and the more cautious among them are desperately trying to hold city and state governments to account for their hastiness and lack of oversight, often neglecting small- to medium-scale prototyping, careful collection and analysis of resultant data, and permanent monitoring plans).

International relations have also become more strained. The economic fallout of months of quarantine has led to more protectionist national policies. Tensions between Western nations and China, Russia, and Iran – already strained prior to the virus – have soared following the global pandemic. As a direct consequence of China’s initial obfuscation, and their continuing resistance to all forms of international investigation into the initial emergence and handling of the SARS-Cov-2 virus in Hubei province, Western nations have accused China of everything under the sun: negligence, trade practices intended to deprive
other countries of supplies, an internationally damaging cover-up and suppression of data, encouraging the spread of anti-West propaganda, even manufacturing of bioweapons and intentional infliction of global economic damage. In response, China has counter-accused the United States of manufacturing and releasing the virus (as well as many other sins), while Russia has enthusiastically joined into fray, criticizing Western imperialism and arrogance.

More indirectly, however, global tensions are rising due to the downstream effects of the economic downturn. Many authoritarian governments have weakened after being perceived as not reacting appropriately to the virus, not protecting their citizens, or using the virus as an excuse to crack down on political dissidence to an unparalleled degree, causing riots and civil unrest. Developing countries, initially thought to have been spared by the worst of virus, experienced a sudden decrease in international aid and investment, and have struggled to deal with a wave of unemployment and rapidly deteriorating public infrastructure. Increased factionalization has led to conflict and regional instability, and the countries most interested in gaining influence in these regions – the United States, Israel, Iran, Russia, now China too – have renewed their efforts in supporting factions that suit their interests in the region. Religious extremist groups have gained strength in many of these regions, often be coopting secular pushback and courting foreign powers. Overall, this has led to an increased frenzy in geopolitical maneuvering in South East Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. The words “Cold War” are coming more and more readily to the lips of many political commentators…

On an even less tangible level, the coronavirus has changed people’s attitudes in all sorts of subtle ways. After the emotional rollercoaster of the pandemic and the raucous atmosphere of the first years thereafter – the Roaring 20’s, indeed – people seem to have become more reticent, more quiet or somber in a way that’s hard to articulate. There’s a sense that something big has happened, and we don’t quite know what to do now. Children and teenagers, many of whose families experienced economic or domestic strife in addition to the anxiety and uncertainty surrounding the pandemic, look at the world with slightly wider eyes – having undergone this experience during the formative years in which they form their impressions of “normalcy”, their world seems to be one in which everything is in the air and nothing is certain. Some people have come out of the pandemic stronger and more hard-hearted than before, having overcome tragedies large and small. Some people have not responded as well. Some extroverted and outgoing people have assumed a more muted demeanour; others have
swung in the opposite direction, becoming louder and more boisterous than before. Everyone is suddenly much more interested in watching the news now, and the heated debates of the culture wars have been put on the back-burner (at least temporarily) as they deal with more personal and immediate problems.

Some things have improved, some things have gone in the other direction. But despite a semblance of normalcy, things have not gone back to normal, and it’s not yet clear what “normal” will look like now. The best we can do is to pull closer together and try to find some comfort and support as we try to navigate this uncertain new reality. I hope we will be able to do it thoughtfully, bearing in mind that emotion must be recognized and taken into account, but reason must ultimately be the one to guide us in making our decisions moving forward.

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The Sacred

Living-Room Meccas‍

In the years following confinement, the necessity of ritual and meaning-making behaviours demanded re-accommodation given the new dimensions of space. A thanksgiving dinner over ‘Zoom’ was to be the shallows of this ocean, and a manically feathered pacing of one’s living room -- mardi gras -- was to be its depths. Meaning is tied to space in the way song is tied to our tongues. After all, did one cross the metaphorical barrier into adulthood without crossing all the physical barriers? The border of another’s body, the cloth thresholds of a first work-uniform, the invisible, but no less physical, barriers of responsibility.

The paradox of pilgrimage is to cross physical, exterior space so as to cross immaterial, interior space. Denied its physical dimensions in a confined world, the processes of meaning twisted inwards -like a contortionist into a box- so as to recapitulate themselves at the scale of our domestic, medium sized personal worlds. Mecca, the wailing wall, they all stood empty, but their significance did not: where then, did this significance end up?

The trend of so-called ‘living room meccas’ began at some point in early 2023. Historians of the recent past have suggested that the pope allowing a verbal, rather than physical, eucharist to begin in 2020 set the religious precedent. Others have compared the sort of forced ‘interiorization’ of religious experience to a second protestant reformation: after all, when you can only wander within yourself, it would be fruitless to place God in the great ‘without’. Anthropologists took the trend to be the final vindication of Eleade’s suggestion that the structure of a spiritual cosmology will recapitulate itself in the architecture of the home. And so it did.

Across the world, families engaged in a spatial sacrifice. The object of sacrifice: a single room of the house. The sacrifice of a room generates the geometry of sacred space. The room was to be cleared of all familiar objects, rendered empty of whatever tied it to its former use. The door was to be shut, and depending on the tradition its key was to be kept either by a mediating figure of authority in the family, or held apart by common agreement. The room would lie alien to the house for months, perhaps years. Children would whisper about the room and adults would grow to think of it as a sort of partial-object, a kind of external dimension that had infected and infiltrated the home from within. Photographs of the room would be destroyed and images depicting it would be banned. Footsteps crossing its closed doorway would land gently as if cautious of disturbing some sleeping inhabitant. Eventually memory of the room softens into speculation, and speculation into myth. Gentle arguments about who locked the door would erupt, until it seemed that the door had perhaps, truly, locked itself.

And once in a lifetime, usually alone and on the cusp of adulthood or death, a member of the household would depart down the hallway to the room, key in hand, and cross the threshold into what once held a kitchen cabinet, or a laundry-machine, or a blockade of houseplants. They find themselves overwhelmed, afraid, weeping, or at peace. They would stay in the room for an amount of time which eluded them. Upon return they would be unable to articulate the experience.

Some homes –so called “atheist homes”- resisted the sacrifice of a room. Theologians either criticized these homes for having no exterior, or no interior (as whether the house which enclosed the sacred room constituted the interior, or exterior, of the sacred room remained a topic of debate). Some homes boasted whole forbidden galleries, and others, still richer, boasted rooms they claimed would never be opened. Speculative scholars have claimed that this interiorization of sacred space diagnoses an end to various of history’s catastrophes, among them war, the state, and religious violence. Borders within houses replace borders between houses, Mecca replicates itself a million-fold, pilgrimage occurs simultaneously, but individually, within the confines of four walls. Under these criteria, conquest becomes meaningless; or so these speculative scholars hope. Another possibility presents itself- that the confinement finally ends, that liberty of movement is restored, and the rooms remained locked, the streets remain empty, and the great sacred exterior remains, forever, replaced by its interior analogue.

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Books

The years following confinement, the publishing industry almost disappeared. The giants, of course, the very large university press and the very large publishers, survived. But not easily. People’s taste changed. The sale of hard-core sci fi plummeted as the need for looking inwards at society became more important. Post-apocalyptic novels and essays on the other hand became even more popular. Crime novels almost disappeared as people realized they weren’t afraid of their neighbours anymore but actually craved their contacts. A new sort of how-to literature emerged, one focused on techno-contact, techno-sensitivity, techno-friendship which of course changed social media completely which suddenly became much less toxic. No more pictures of extraordinary vacations as no one travelled anymore. Posting images of the perfect experience, the perfect sunset, the perfect ski jump, etc., felt empty, staged and vacuous now that travels, large gatherings, bars and sports events had become mostly a virtual, online experience. Instagram changed completely, as staging and filtering one’s image became so easy that even seniors started doing it, which of course made it completely unattractive to young people. In fact, most people now considered staging of one’s perfect body with as much amusement as they would comic books with their fantasy-like bodies and abilities. The focus became inward, my apartment, my simple life, my ability to live alone successfully. A new trend emerged: how long can one stay confined and alone.

Independent publishers were hit hard. Most of the bricks and mortars bookstores closed. At first most independent publishers almost disappeared as they refused to adapt. But then they realized that people were reading more and that sales of book were increasing substantially. They also realized that they had to become more specific, more unique, and that the quality of the books they produced, both in terms of form and content, had to increase. As gov’t funding plummeted but readership increased, they realized that there was a huge market for beautiful books, important books, even poetry books. They also realized that the sale of more ‘difficult’ books suddenly increased as their visibility improved, now that the overall quantity of books published had dropped significantly. Interestingly the drop mostly affected mediocre books that publishers had put on the market to maintain a certain level of production.

Book publishing suddenly operated in 3 distinct ways. Large, best-selling books publishers. Independent book publishers whose books became better, more carefully produced, more beautiful objects, and in which the quality of content increased significantly. And a third very surprising way: a small number of independent and large book publishers started experimenting with the object. VR books, books with holograms, books handwritten by the author, books co-written with AI, etc. The industry suddenly became very healthy.

Most university press didn’t survive as their business model was based on gov’t grants with very little attention paid to sales and readership. Only a few survived but those who did saw their sales increased dramatically as editorial boards realized that the world was hungry for deep discussion and debates, for the raising of important questions, for clear, strong and provocative analysis. To the relief of everyone, the horrible writing style of most academic books disappeared. Writing became clearer, more transparent, more engaged. This also had a dramatic effect on PhDs as universities could not rely on the growth model anymore. The number of PhDs became a financial liability, because gov’t funding had dropped. The selection of candidates and subject became much more selective. Furthermore, the need to make one's
writing available to the general public became a necessity.

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Mother's Day, 2025

Dear Joan and Margot,

I so remember the first pandemic Mother’s Day, when we had a Zoom brunch, and you had arranged for a Van Houtte’s coffee (decaf) and a croissant to be delivered to my door at exactly the right time. From Los Angeles where you were still managing Social media campaigns for Think Jam, Joan, to Toronto where Migs and Greg were doing their non-profit things and wondering how virtual fundraising was going to raise the necessary funds for Children in hospitals and for the WWF, we convened – Zoom-– how we thought it a miracle, and now , just a quaint relic of the first onslaught and the scramble to connect under lockdown.

And, this year – Covid is history – ie vaccinated out of our fear lexicon – but we have managed to come through 2 rather virulent American viruses, and are seeing now the shifts that perhaps we had always hoped for, taking place.

My Calgary boss, Roger Gibbins promoted “glocalism” over “globalism” at the end of the last century. I think we are living it – and very happily.

So, look what we have managed to do !!

1. The NHL set up its permanent, no-fan, playing community in the Lower St. Lawrence near the New Brunswick- Maine border. Greg has the job of his dreams running their non-profit arm, and skating in Arena 17 whenever he wants !

2. WWF sent Margot to the Lower St. Lawrence to head up the Eastern Canadian branch – with a special eye on the whales and the pipelines ( yes, the Oil people won that battle with the cry of National self-sufficiency in oil; so Riviere du Loup is awash in Calgary paraphernalia.

3. Joan – you have been the main beneficiary of the UBI which was implemented by the second Trudeau majority – not difficult as the NDP was the Official Opposition by then, and the Conservatives were floundering with 10 seats. Who knew that all the pictures of flowers that you took during the 6 months of the 2020 lockdown would turn you completely away from the entertainment industry ?! You have time now to complete your Phd in Botany – on-line – what else? and to be the resident photographer at the Reford Gardens.

And me, your little old Mum – Well,

1. I took advantage of the Heritage Home RePurposing Fund to winterize our home in Metis; and used the Technology Innovation Allotment to develop the UV Sanitizing Entryway – which can be adapted to any doorway anywhere. I love the royalties , but don’t feel it was highly creative – I just modified what they have been doing at airports for years. In any case, we are all germ and virus freed everytime we come through the front door.

2. BLUE is starting the Summer Program tomorrow, and this time we have an international cohort as well. I still love the local Showcase at B21 though, and thanks to POD TRAVEL and the new POD RESIDENCES at McGill I will be safe going back and forth from here to Montreal when I need to.

But most of all, we are now together, we are productive, connected, self-sufficient. – I will save the farm re-cap because we discussed that at dinner.

And for a radical future for society, I had always maintained we would have to build it in our individual lives first. We live locally in the Lower St. Lawrence, but we are global citizens. The airport is the key – that, and the POD TRAVEL ensures safety.

For now, though – I hope you are in the kitchen making a special Mother’s Day Dinner, because I am getting hungry, and a decaf and a croissant won’t do it !!

xoxox Mum