I took my iPhone out of my pocket in Orlando Florida and used my finger to open an app and buy a digital ticket with some digital dollars.

Then I used another app to ask someone to pick me up and give me a ride—10 minutes later a stranger was outside waiting for me and I got into his car and he drove me to the airport.

When I got inside the airport I took my phone out and showed my digital ticket to a lady and then I walked through a machine that could see through my clothes and then I walked onto a metal tube that had wings and sat in a chair with about 100 other people.

The metal tube drove really fast down a strip of asphalt until it lifted up into the air and started flying. I then leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes while 1,000’s of gallons of combusting jet fuel propelled us through the sky at about 600 mph.

A couple hours later the metal tube landed on a strip of asphalt in Cancun Mexico.

I stood up out of my chair and walked off the metal tube then I took my phone out of my pocket again and used an app to buy another digital ticket.

I went outside and showed that ticket to a guy who was standing in front of a big metal box with a bunch of wheels underneath it, then I walked onto the metal box and sat in a chair with about 40 other people.

The door on the metal box closed and we started moving. I then leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes while a tank of combusting diesel fuel rotated our wheels across a strip of asphalt at about 60 mph.

A few hours later the metal box stopped in the middle of Valladolid—an ancient Mayan city that was built about 500 years ago by a bunch of guys with sticks and rocks and mud.

I got off the metal box and started looking around for a taco because I was hungry.

As I was walking I noticed a particular wall that I thought looked really cool.

So I took my iPhone out of my pocket, pointed its built-in computational imaging device at the wall, then I touched a button with my finger which instantaneously captured and stored a square matrix of 12 million digital pixels onto an internal network of microscopic transistors.

Then I noticed another cool wall across the street so I walked over there and captured another square matrix of 12 million pixels.

Then I noticed another one. And another. And another. And another.

Well it turns out there’s a whole bunch of cool walls in that old city and after walking around for a few days and pointing my iPhone’s built-in computational imaging device at them, and touching a button with my finger, I had inadvertently captured and stored about 1.2 billion pixels, comprising the digital representation of 100 different walls from throughout the ancient Mayan city of Valladolid Mexico!

I also ate lots of good tacos…

But then I found myself in a predicament where I’ve got this phone in my pocket and inside that phone there’s a network of microscopic transistors and within that network of microscopic transistors there’s all these billions of digital pixels just kind of sitting there…

And so I’m like, great, what am I supposed to do with all these pixels?

So I opened my laptop and connected to the internet, then I did a search on Google by tapping and clicking a few buttons on my keyboard which returned 24,800,000 results in 0.36 seconds.

While looking through those results I came across an on-demand printing and framing company.

And I thought, well that would be pretty cool—maybe these guys can take all the billions of digital pixels that I’ve got in my pocket and convert them back into physical walls!

So I clicked and tapped a few more buttons on my laptop and built a website with WordPress.

And then I paid about 100 digital dollars to save that website inside a network of microscopic transistors, located inside a fancy metal cabinet, located inside a dark room, located somewhere in Provo Utah…

Then for ten more digital dollars I purchased a digital address called www.wallsofmexico.com and directed that address to the website saved inside the cabinet in Utah.

And so how it works is now…

if you’re thinking to yourself, Jeez, I really wish I could look at some cool walls in an ancient Mayan city down in Mexico, but I just don’t have time to sit on a metal tube and a metal box for a bunch of hours and then walk around the streets for a few days.

it’s all good…

Because now you can just take your phone out of your pocket and visit www.wallsofmexico.com and look at all the millions of digital pixel matrixes which represent the same physical walls that I was looking at while I was down there eating tacos and walking around.

And while you’re doing that…if you come across a particular matrix of pixels that happen to be organized in such a way that evokes a positive feeling inside of you, then you can put that matrix into your digital shopping cart by tapping a button with your finger.

And then you just tap another button with your finger and go to the checkout page…

once you’re on the checkout page you’ll have to give me some of your digital dollars by entering the numbers from one of the plastic cards in your wallet and then tapping the big green Place Order button.

When you tap that button you’re basically going to trigger a very specific chain of specialized events using an application programming interface, or API…

As the first event in that chain, a digital notification will instantaneously get sent over to the printing and framing company (that one we found in Google earlier) and the notification will say something like this: 

Hey! You have to print this digital matrix of 12 million pixels (file #1375) and then you have to take out your hammer and nails and some wood and frame it. And then you have to package it in a box and ship it to Sally May at 123 Elm Street Springfield, IL 62701

And then…well…that’s basically what will happen.

Some guy in a warehouse down in Georgia will be taking a sip of coffee when he sees that notification pop up on his computer screen. He’ll set his coffee down and send the matrix of digital pixels that was specified in the notification (file #1375) over to a really expensive printer.

Moments later, the printer will receive that matrix of digital pixels and then convert them into atomized particles of ink which it will then spray onto a sheet of museum-grade paper in less than a minute.

Some other person from the framing department will grab that sheet of paper from the printer’s output tray and bring it over to their work station where they’ll use a pneumatic nailer and some pieces of wood and some other stuff to bang together a custom frame to go around the sheet of paper.

The framed sheet of paper with atomized ink particles freshly sprayed onto it will then get passed along to another person over in the shipping department who will then wrap the frame in bubble wrap, pack it into a cardboard box, and then print a thermal shipping label and slap it onto the side of that box.

Later in the day some lady wearing a brown outfit will pickup that cardboard box from the warehouse and place it gently in the back of a brown metal box on wheels. That lady will then climb into the brown metal box and sit in a chair while a tank of combusting diesel fuel rotates her wheels across a network of asphalt which will eventually lead her to a nearby airport.

At the airport, another person wearing a brown outfit will remove the brown cardboard box from the brown metal box on wheels and place it gently inside a metal tube with wings.

The metal tube with wings will then drive really fast down a strip of asphalt until it lifts up into the air and starts flying…

1,000’s of gallons of combusting jet fuel will then propel the metal tube through the sky for the next few hours until it lands on a strip of asphalt in Chicago, where another person wearing a brown outfit will remove the brown cardboard box from the metal tube and place it gently inside another brown metal box on wheels.

Then some other guy wearing a brown outfit will climb into the brown metal box and sit in a chair while a tank of combusting diesel fuel rotates his wheels across a network of asphalt which will eventually lead him to 123 Elm Street Springfield, IL 62701, where he’ll then take the brown cardboard box out of the back of his brown metal box on wheels and walk it up to your front door (assuming you’re Sally) and place it very gently on the ground.

Then you’ll open your front door and see an odd shaped cardboard box sitting there and it might take you a second to remember what you ordered, but then you’ll be like, oh yeaaah…my wall!

So then you’ll open the box, you’ll rip the bubble wrap off your frame, you’ll grab a hammer and scrounge around frantically for a small nail which you’ll probably find in a kitchen drawer or something, you’ll tap the nail into your wall, line up the d-ring on the back of your frame with the nail, and voila…

just like that, you’ll have a physical reproduction of a 12 million pixel digital representation of a wall that was built in a 500 year old Mayan city by a bunch of guys with sticks and rocks and mud, hanging on the wall in your home in Springfield Illinois (assuming you’re Sally) that you can look at when you’re not looking at the pixels on your phone or your laptop or your tv.

In the end, some of the digital dollars that you paid will go to the framing company in exchange for their time and materials, some of it will go to the people wearing brown outfits in exchange for their time and combusted fuel, and the remaining dollars will go to me in exchange for the time I spent sitting on the metal tube and the metal box and pointing my computational imaging device at walls and tapping buttons with my finger and eating tacos while you were at work or playing with your kids or doing whatever else you happen to do with your fingers.

Thanks for looking at my collection of pixel matrixes.

Owen