the old internet as psyche

[catalog]

I think in that matter ER can become more relevant than completely Virtual Reality, perhaps with more and more virtual elements/extensions coming in.
No cyberpunk just getting on the tube and putting the snapchat dog facefilter on everyone's face. Erasing all the people around you and replacing them with chunky representations of their hitboxes.
More skins for your apartment/personal space than you can imagine.

Clothes seen as unnecessary since you can generate another outfit, displaying a thousand different ones on a night out, bah, even having one constantly morph and warp.
I imagine it will be like living at the bottom of the ocean, seaweed and corals seemingly changing shape under the pressure of masses of water above it.
Everything still a function of the real, first one to one mappings, later on please calculate my mood and accordingly draw manga-like reactions them on my face.

I met my cousin from the US in a pub in VR the other night. The portal is this extremely confusing place called "VR Chat" and the pub itself was called "The Mighty Pug."

My avatar was all messed up cos i picked it really quickly and couldn't work out how to change it. And I was IRL sat on the floor cos I was charging the headset at the same time.

So you can "teleport" in this place to move, and cos I was sat down, when I first met my cousin, whose avatar was robocop type outfit, he was laughing his head off. then he showed me in a mirror and i was this sort of manga anime japanese girl with a really short skirt, but cos i was sat down, i was sat down in this and sort of scootching across the floor. very obscene looking so i had to change it.

in the pub itself, i mean that's where it falls down a bit. cos you pick up drinks, sit down, but you can't really touch anyone or anything.

sort of fun, but you need more haptic feedback, maybe some smells.

 

[version]

in the new internet you have to chose between the informative yet dry and utilitarian text of wikipedia and the beautiful yet infantile game worlds--but what if you didn't? what if the best aspects of both were combined into one experience?

I thought the educational/tour mode in some of the recent Assassin's Creed games went some way to achieving that. Imagine if we get to a point where history's being taught in school via VR headsets with a teacher guiding a class around Ancient Rome or Greece or wherever.




The stuff on spatial metaphors earlier in the thread makes for an interesting connection to something Kenner talks about in The Pound Era re: the language of space and objects being applied to writing. We talk about a book having depth and surface, background and foreground, levels and structure, perspectives and points of view. We describe a story in terms of physical space. The language of painting and architecture.

Luka said the spatial metaphor's irresistible when I was talking about 'revealing the map' and it is. It seems to be the natural response when looking to describe something; I assume due to the relative stability of physical space. It's bit easier to relate to than, say, time.

 

[mvuent]

"revealing the map" really is a great metaphor. there's the stability aspect, while at the same time it implies a freedom to move around and explore further. i think ideally with in-game education you want inquiry and discussion that's somehow integrated with the game without being fixed/limited within preset bounds. @Woebot had the excellent idea of creating a dissensus minecraft server, maybe we should just replace the forum with that.

this was another cool intersection of virtual exploration and intellectual/spiritual activity in that you had a bunch of video game addicted nerds (in the best sense) learning about ancient mythology/folklore, literature, coding, etc. to solve an in-game riddle:

 

[mvuent]

just rereading the OP, it's too perfect that the black dog had those connections with video game design and esoterica bulletin sites haha

 

[Mr. Tea]

I met my cousin from the US in a pub in VR the other night. The portal is this extremely confusing place called "VR Chat" and the pub itself was called "The Mighty Pug."

My avatar was all messed up cos i picked it really quickly and couldn't work out how to change it. And I was IRL sat on the floor cos I was charging the headset at the same time.

So you can "teleport" in this place to move, and cos I was sat down, when I first met my cousin, whose avatar was robocop type outfit, he was laughing his head off. then he showed me in a mirror and i was this sort of manga anime japanese girl with a really short skirt, but cos i was sat down, i was sat down in this and sort of scootching across the floor. very obscene looking so i had to change it.

in the pub itself, i mean that's where it falls down a bit. cos you pick up drinks, sit down, but you can't really touch anyone or anything.

sort of fun, but you need more haptic feedback, maybe some smells.

This is what Gison warned us about.

 

[version]

"revealing the map" really is a great metaphor. there's the stability aspect, while at the same time it implies a freedom to move around and explore further. i think ideally with in-game education you want inquiry and discussion that's somehow integrated with the game without being fixed/limited within preset bounds. @Woebot had the excellent idea of creating a dissensus minecraft server, maybe we should just replace the forum with that.

this was another cool intersection of virtual exploration and intellectual/spiritual activity in that you had a bunch of video game addicted nerds (in the best sense) learning about ancient mythology/folklore, literature, coding, etc. to solve an in-game riddle:

A game where you have free rein to affect history would be interesting. Something like that Assassin's Creed mode, but you can, say, prevent Caesar's murder then see how that pans out.

Endless Ocean was in that educational vein; exploring virtual oceans.

in the new internet you have to chose between the informative yet dry and utilitarian text of wikipedia and the beautiful yet infantile game worlds--but what if you didn't? what if the best aspects of both were combined into one experience?

If you could get Wikipedia running in VR and pull the pages around like the tech in Minority Report whilst also being able to jump in and out of images that would be something.

 

[sufi]

just rereading the OP, it's too perfect that the black dog had those connections with video game design and esoterica bulletin sites haha

I'm not sure what OP meant by psyche

Great thread though!

 

[sufi]

A game where you have free rein to affect history would be interesting. Something like that Assassin's Creed mode, but you can, say, prevent Caesar's murder then see how that pans out.

Endless Ocean was in that educational vein; exploring virtual oceans.



If you could get Wikipedia running in VR and pull the pages around like the tech in Minority Report whilst also being able to jump in and out of images that would be something.

isnt that more like AR? that seems like a better future than VR to me, VR seems like it will inevitably lead to disengaging with meatspace

 

[sufi]

I met my cousin from the US in a pub in VR the other night. The portal is this extremely confusing place called "VR Chat" and the pub itself was called "The Mighty Pug."

My avatar was all messed up cos i picked it really quickly and couldn't work out how to change it. And I was IRL sat on the floor cos I was charging the headset at the same time.

So you can "teleport" in this place to move, and cos I was sat down, when I first met my cousin, whose avatar was robocop type outfit, he was laughing his head off. then he showed me in a mirror and i was this sort of manga anime japanese girl with a really short skirt, but cos i was sat down, i was sat down in this and sort of scootching across the floor. very obscene looking so i had to change it.

in the pub itself, i mean that's where it falls down a bit. cos you pick up drinks, sit down, but you can't really touch anyone or anything.

sort of fun, but you need more haptic feedback, maybe some smells.

we really need to get past the crappy hardware we have now - all cables and charging and rsi

your device is so private and personal - password protected and full of highly sensitive data about all aspects of your life, like a weird little buddy you share your top secrets with - customised with all your settings and preferences and filters, like your porthole onto the world but also a mirror of your personailty, and an extension of your brain

 

[william_kent]

isnt that more like AR? that seems like a better future than VR to me, VR seems like it will inevitably lead to disengaging with meatspace

I've had it on reasonable authority ( ie., my weed dealer ) that Augmented Reality is where the big companies are placing their bets on, because VR has a motion sickness problem that needs to be resolved...

 

[sufi]

we really need to get past the crappy hardware we have now - all cables and charging and rsi

your device is so private and personal - password protected and full of highly sensitive data about all aspects of your life, like a weird little buddy you share your top secrets with - customised with all your settings and preferences and filters, like your porthole onto the world but also a mirror of your personailty, and an extension of your brain

and back to the OP, you have that private space to expand your brain in all sort of weird directions and also the internet has a way of pre-empting your weird request - someone will inevitably already have memed it

 

[sufi]

I've had it on reasonable authority ( ie., my weed dealer ) that Augmented Reality is where the big companies are placing their bets on, because VR has a motion sickness problem that needs to be resolved...

i'm glad to hear it

 

[version]

AR's the more immediately exciting of the two, imo. It's like magic, pulling things out of the screen and into the real world. Also, I agree with @sufi about augmenting reality being preferable to abandoning it for the virtual. I'm not comfortable with the idea of us ending up in pods and being left helpless in the material world.

 

[Mr. Tea]

I'm not comfortable with the idea of us ending up in pods and being left helpless in the material world.

AKA the Corpsey-Luka fear-fantasy.

 

[sufi]

and back to the OP, you have that private space to expand your brain in all sort of weird directions and also the internet has a way of pre-empting your weird request - someone will inevitably already have memed it

“There has not been a huge amount of information about how he became fascinated by demons and the occult because it was all done behind locked doors in his bedroom,” said Harding.

 

[sufi]

there may be a great blossoming of previously isloated weirdies on the great boris freedom day, a carnival of extremophiles

 

[catalog]

isnt that more like AR? that seems like a better future than VR to me, VR seems like it will inevitably lead to disengaging with meatspace

AR's the more immediately exciting of the two, imo. It's like magic, pulling things out of the screen and into the real world. Also, I agree with @sufi about augmenting reality being preferable to abandoning it for the virtual. I'm not comfortable with the idea of us ending up in pods and being left helpless in the material world.

it's good to read these comments on AR vs VR.

I felt basically the same after having the headset for a few weeks - barely use it now. It's a bit of a faff and the good bits are the high octane things that get old quite quick. Niece and nephew love it tho.

I came up with an idea for AR and this company have given me a bit of development money to go a bit further with it. It's basically an extension of what I've been doing with some of my drawings - the ones where I took photos of pavements and then drew/painted over them.

So the idea is to do something like that, but which can be done out in the field, so to speak. And there would be an AI/machine learning element.

So basically you instruct the AI as to what it is you see in the abstract thing in nature and then some kind of programme does some of the drawing for you. or maybe you make the first mark, and it iterates from there.

I won't go into massive detail, but if anyone's interested in knowing more, msg me.

 

[william_kent]

at the moment I would guess that AR is "winning" - the popularity of Pokemon Go when it was launched shows there is a market for it - whereas I can see that VR will eventually be used for more niche pursuits - the one area where I can see it being adopted is in teaching surgery - sort of a more realistic version of 'operation'

 

[william_kent]

So basically you instruct the AI as to what it is you see in the abstract thing in nature and then some kind of programme does some of the drawing for you. or maybe you make the first mark, and it iterates from there.

I've been playing with CLIP this week - the idea is you supply a text prompt to the program, and the Machine Learning / AI attempts to create an image based on the phrase - I've been experimenting with feeding the AI phrases from the treeshagging thread...

 

[catalog]

oh that reminds me, i've got another post to make in that thread...