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Spain's Hologram Protest: Thousands Join Virtual March In Madrid
An anonymous reader writes Thousands of people marched past a parliament building in Madrid to protest a new law that they say endangers civil liberties. But none of them were actually there. From the article: "Late last year the Spanish government passed a law that set extreme fines for protesters convening outside of government buildings. In response to the controversial Citizen Safety Law, which will take effect on July 1, Spanish activists have staged the world's first ever virtual political demonstration. After months of massive flesh-and-blood protests against the so-called 'gag law', thousands of holograms last night marched in front of the Spanish parliament in Madrid."
The Law is restrictive, for sure, but so are the reasons for its existence. Spain is afflicted by both an old-fashioned right and a just-right-of-Stalin left. We have nothing like the social-democrats of Nordic countries. When the left rules, there is absolute peace and nobody protests, no matter how badly the government is mangling the economy and destroying jobs. When the right wins, there are protests within the protests whether they're doing OK or not. And not peaceful, civil protests, no, violent and extremist ones. It's pure 'Agitprop'. The right, then, issued this law to take a powerful tool from the hands of its political enemies, and the left is enraged. Spain remains, sadly, as divided as ever...
Check out this nugget: Organisers of unauthorised demonstrations could be fined up to €600,000, with further €600 fines for disrespecting police officers, and €30,000 for filming or photographing them.
First, projection onto a semitransparent material is not a pepper's ghost illusion. Pepper's ghost is a reflection onto a 45-degree transparent screen.
Second, you are confusing implimentation with representation.
Full coulour video holograms are science fiction. The technology to create them doesn't exist and probably won't within our lifetime. But many representations of hologram individuals are commonly referred to as holograms, and nobody questions or challenges this.
For example, Arnold Rimmer on Red Dwarf and the EMH Doctor on Star Trek Voyageur are universally accepted as holograms, as is the projection of Princess Leia in Star Wars that was produced by R2-D2. I've never heard any nerd or pedant challenge this. But none of these holograms were made using holography. Rimmer and the EMH were just actors standing on set. Very occasionally they would use visual affects to indicate their hologram-ness. The projection of Princess Leia was also a visual effect. They weren't created using holograms. They represented holograms.
Likewise, this protest involved representations of holograms, created using non-holographic means (because there is no other way to do it). They are as much holograms as any character that is universally referred to as a hologram.
If this was a protest involving people waving toy lightsabers around, I don't think many pedants would complain if the media called it a lightsaber protest. You'd sound kind of stupid complaining that they weren't using "real lightsabers". So I don't know why people get so irrationally bent out of shape over representations of holograms.