A friend of mine told me, a couple of weeks ago, that she's looking forward to seeing the Beatles perform at the Olympics.
I worried for her. Her brain was evidently scrambled. It may be a widespread problem, I thought, due to the proximity of the Games, the Jubilee and Euro 2012. An overdose of flotillas, bank holidays and Madness on the roof, while Zara Phillips qualifies for Britain and Rooney scoooooooores in a mysterious racist backwater, all played out in giddy anticipation of Seb Coe and closed roads, has led us into a baffled haze of general UK fever.
It's all mixed up like a dream. We're now expecting to see the Beatles at the Olympics, Francis Drake sailing a barge for Team GB, and Prince Philip subbed on for Gerrard. (He can't do the whole match. Not with that dicky bladder.)
But then I read about the Hendrix hologram. Using amazing new 3D technology, a British firm is bringing Jimi Hendrix "to virtual life", projecting him onto hidden mirrors and invisible screens to allow fans to experience a Hendrix concert "as though they'd been there" in 1967.
They've already pulled this off with Tupac Shakur, miraculously causing the late rapper to wake from the dead and prance before a delighted audience of 90,000 at a festival in April. Next up, they promise Elvis and The Doors (and thus my friend Carrie's prediction of the Beatles at the Olympics.)
Me, I'm disappointed. If technology can finally whip us back into history, why does our imagination stretch no further than pop concerts? When HG Wells dreamed of time travel, he didn't imagine leaping back a few months to see Ada Crossley doing The Hunting Song. Ray Bradbury didn't craft an astonishing sci-fi world where, by virtue of wondrous technology and mind-blowing machines, he'd be able to hop back a decade to catch Edmundo Ros and his Rumba Band.
No: they conjured dinosaurs and Morlocks, tickling the curiosity of humans about that which we have never seen. You might say: but if we haven't seen it then there is no footage, and this new magic can only be done with footage. I say: nonsense! That is not how a visionary would think.
Experiencing history "as if we'd really been there" is a long-standing human fantasy; why else would there be such a wealth of time-travel fiction, not to mention IT consultants on battle recreation weekends? Until now, that's the best technology we've had for doing it: a tin hat and a paperback.
Have you ever heard (or read) the prologue to Shakespeare's Henry V? It's an apology from the old genius for trying to recreate the Hundred Years' War on a cheap stage with a box of dodgy props.
Can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of France? Or may we cram
Within this wooden O the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt?
asks Shakespeare, knowing full well the answer is no. He pleads with the audience to "Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts" and "Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them."
(I'm assuming there weren't any horses on stage. A couple of festering men stuffed into a Dobbin costume could really have killed the poignancy).
Whenever I hear that prologue, I imagine its author drumming his fingers as he waited for cinema to be invented. I think he would have enjoyed Kenneth Branagh's movie version. But even Shakespeare never dreamed of realistic holograms "as if you'd been there"! Those plebs in the pit would really have put down their rotten fruit and paid attention.
If we can turn old Tupac videos into a dancing hologram, we can make holograms of anything. Why stop at crafting better versions of pop footage we've seen already? That's the small-mindedness of a generation so obsessed with upgrading its iPhones, it can't see the miracle of having a phone at all.
If this is the closest humanity has yet come to time travel, let's at least demand to "experience" something properly interesting.
Tickets to Stamford Bridge
Thrill at the sight of hologrammatic King Harold as he battles King Harald in September 1066, then hurries to Hastings to meet his round two opponent. Who needs football, when you can join this 11th-century version of euphoric English triumph ruined immediately by miserable defeat? (Or, if you're Scottish, the other way round).
Join Henry's lamprey buffet
They say fish is good for you. Well, tell that to Henry I as he dies from a surfeit of lampreys. Tuck in! Eating our special hologram lampreys, you can enjoy the gory historical twist without damaging your own digestive tract.
See the PM shot
Have you ever joked that you'd like to shoot the prime minister? Now you really can! Grip the gun as our hologrammatic Spencer Perceval drops to the floor of the House of Commons, exactly 200 years ago! Then take the story back to 2012 and tell everyone. Poor old Perceval: a tragic figure, now remembered only by pub quizzers.
Goggle at the actresses
Settle yourself comfily into the stalls of 1660, when the first female actors appeared on stage. Forget the wooden O; applaud these beardless, normal-voiced performers as the periwigged audience around you mutters: "Meh, I don't find them believable."
April
Teleport yourself all the way back to April, when the modern whizzkids raised Tupac from the grave! Then creep up behind them and whisper: "That's all very well, but where's the velociraptor?"
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