quicklink | past forward (google)

after reading about the telos file yesterday and discovering this new image generation model (banana something) i did a bit of digging around of the templates they put out.

i came across this past forward template they bundle with it to show devs what they could use the model for and i just absolutely fell in love with the image generation tool that allows me to see what i might have looked like if i lived in a selection of different generations from the 50’s all the way up to the 00’s.

i instantly had to spin up claude and build myself a little script that bundled them together as a .mp4 with transition effects and to put the text titles in the image top left corner, it probably took about thirty minutes.

the gif version is cleaner but it’s massive to i spit them out as mp4 files, gif would be better for transportability, maybe i’ll look at making a gif version that i’ll bolt onto this post if i can get the size down.

more than anything it really got me thinking about how lucky we are to experience this time now, in this realm, in this time slip that we have access to these tools. looking at a virtualized potential version of me, what would their life experience feel like, what was their achievements in their lives, what baton did they pass to the next generation, were they even thinking about what came next for their children or did they just want them to be happy and healthy like most parents?

(for full effect maybe play this while it cycles around)

how environment changes the person behind your bloodline, is this the future our uploaded digital selves will feel, misaligned, a person out of time, no anchor point to the reality of the ground underneath our feet, is that really ground, atmosphere, gravity?

will we always be running from doubt, that hollow space between the feeling of something just out of reach or will we feel more complete that we can swap out from all potentially known infinite dreams into something that excites us to exist at all?

it certainly triggered something in me, like looking at old black and white photos, the query that happens internally, we all have it but for different reasons, same as when we restore pictures from all the scratches and blemishes to a quality of fresh and new like we are used too, make time and damage really is what makes something feel ages and therefore where the legacy feels come from.

something powerful about being from anytime in time, timeless.