Our Shifting View: Living In A World Of Augmented Reality

We like to think we have our feet firmly planted on the ground. We actually like reality, and have never found the need to escape it – as scary as it can be at times.

This week our News Radar has shifted to placed like Dallas and Orinda, to Baton Rouge and Danville, to Istanbul and Walnut Creek and who would have ever thought we’d consider any of those places all in the same breath, ever?

We’re a local news site with a World View, we guess, mindful of the fact that waves breaking against far-off shores can cause ripples here at home, and we’re watching breaking news events in France and Turkey on our handhelds while knocking back a pinxtos in our Walnut Creek version of Barcelona.

We’re mindful of the technology we’ve grown used to using, and how much impact it can have on our lives as we push out further into formerly barren farmland and uncharted regions of space, writing that part of our encroachment on other places off to “the innate explorative instincts of mankind.”

Okay. So we’re poking our cameras in for close-up views of Jupiter and dodging earthbound kids hunting for creatures we can’t see and whose names we can’t pronounce.

No, we don’t know what a Golbat is and we’re not going hunting for one. In our drinking days there may have been one or two of the guldurn things climbing down our walls but these days we’re content to walk with our head up and on that swivel people in the military like to talk about.

You just never know what’s coming down the road and, as a “been there, seen-everything, got the Pulitzer,” reporter used to tell us: “Keep your head up, kid. You’ll want to see it coming…”

And it’s true, even as we find out what we already knew, that madmen can turn something as simple as a lorry or a kitchen knife into a weapon of mass murder, and that they can strike at any time.

On the Home Front this Tuesday, we’re watching our local governments preparing to come with ways to handle this New Wave of Tech Disruption as changes arrive in the 24/680 – regulations covering short-terms rentals, appropriate placement of cell phone gear, whether we really need that new mega-Mall when Amazon will just be dropping what we need to us by drone in a few weeks.

Things are changing at light speed and then some things never seem to: people are still loading up on Joy Juice or their favorite chemicals and doing crazy things; like ramming police cars in Walnut Creek or stealing motorcycles and running from police in San Ramon and Danville last night, or running from CHP and Martinez police on Highway 4 at speeds a Bulbasaur would envy.

And we’re here, watching it all unfold, walking with our head up and on full alert – head on a swivel and ready for what’s coming nex…. oh, excuse us, kids, how’s that PoGo Hunt going, anyway?