From: vagans@inanna.eanna.net
Johnny Fusion =11811= wrote:
> Sourcerer wrote:
> : Johnny Fusion =11811= wrote:
> :> Sourcerer wrote:
> : Wasn't it the 'immersiveness' of cyberspace whether the matrix or the
> : metaverse that attracted us? Immersiveness is doable -- the good stuff
> : is used by militaries for example; I don't know about the wetware
> : connection, but I'd guess "probably" on some level of r&d. One reason to
> : look back to the recent past is to see what has been discarded as
> : undoable, though probably unprofitable is more accurate. Not just
> : technologies directly, but business plans based on technologies that
> : were only implicit, but not developed. The dot com bubble is a trove of
> : the discarded.
>
> I am not sure if it is the immersiveness that attracted me to gibsonspace
> and the metaverse, but more the direct interaction with data and processes
> of the digital domain. As an old school hacker and zen programmer
> programming was a way to "commune" with the computer. Especially in
> assembly language programming the connection I had to the machine, the
> processor and the memory could be described as "intimate".
The Amiga had lethal flaws in concept, ntsc/pal display being major, for
example, but at the time every other platform seemed retarded by
comparison. With the graphic web available, I got a 386dx and Slackware.
My job required attention to text and language and I got personally
interested in that. The unix utilities were excellent tools for text. I
think by our time on altcp, I'd lost interest in computers-in-themselves.
> I don't think its the immersiveness its the intimacy,
I think they imply each other.
> where the division
> between self and the technology becomes blurred. With implants, with
> direct neural connection, we don't just blur the line, we erase it.
I just want to see for myself whether it is erased or not, what it feels
like...kinda like Mr Toad and motorcars.
> It almost is not like interfaces enable us to connect to the technology,
> but are a prophylatic seperating us from the bits we want to directly
> interact with. Immersiveness is another tool to get us there. By engaging
> the senses we use the natural biological inputs of eyes and ears and for
> some daring souls, touch. All sensation happens in the mind and
> immersiveness is a way to communicate more fully to that mind.
I used to have a sig quoting Brenda Laurel "No fucking interface!" (I
can't find what the quote is from, though). We're all monkeys at heart;
we are fascinated by objects and want to manipulate them making
patterns, designs, meaning. Hand eye coordination is implicated in our
capacity to aquire language and our manipulation of the artefacts of
language as objects in our thoughts.
> : Reading your reply to Poly...Steampunk is of interest, but my approach
> : has been via the hauntological which tends to plop me down in the
> : Gernsback continuum rather than Victoriana.
>
> Steam may have been a reaction to Cyber. Not sure. Its funny that my
> involvement with that subculture came via the virtual world a "cyber"
> technology. But my brand of Steampunk is more Diamond Age and less HG
> Wells. A lot of the stuff carries over including the love of gadgets and
> goggles.
Funny odd, too, that Steam may be the most viable of cyberpunk variants,
and one that sometimes sails close to the more tech-oriented goth. In
the setup for a new counter or sub cultural disposition it seems a
requirement to skip over the immediate past and reach back. One expects
it of Youth(tm) (c'mon you kids, dammit, it's time), but it may be the
fate of us from old cp to somehow manage to skip over our own past while
at the same time staying with it.
The hauntological sense is that the past is present, and an actor in it.
It is present imo through the media of its era. On a timeline, the more
recent the past, the more it exists in the present because the media was
'denser' -- we can see and hear the 1920s moreso than the 1720s. The
past is not quite retro anymore. I think it is a profound cultural
phenomenon.
> I dunno if rancho is Virtual Reality (yet Oh Poly, join .mpa and I in
> Second Life, build it!) but it definatly is SHARED reality.
Michael is with Second Life? I expect some nice stagecraft there. I hope
Poly accepts your offer.
> : Poly says you could write Rancho if you could see it. Omar couldn't see
> : it and became fussed because so many posters "flocked" to those "silly
> : fictions". Even dick@aol wrote Rancho 8-) sigh.
>
> I don't think I wrote much Rancho at all. Though I did "appear" in other's
> posts. But yeah I participated. I think I had a room on the second
> floor.. can I have it back?
We ran out of room and had to build the Tmp Annex for new arrivals, but
second floor room assignments are for life, so it is still yours.
>Better yet can I move into the attic?
Ah...well, the witch's hat tower with the widow's walk is mine, and Lisa
and Sym took over the attic, but they haven't been around for awhile.
I'll tell Lisa you're interested in some attic space. Maybe you two
could work out a deal.
> : How and why did so many people with no association except they posted to
> : altcp see the same thing? Dunno.
>
> shared reality through text. But really that was so 20th Century. Shared
> reality in this century is built of prims.
It was so every century since the Sumerians, including the 19th (he said
to the Steampunker). Don't you write letters in Second Life? Isn't there
a postal service?
--
(__) Sourcerer
/(<>)\ O|O|O|O||O||O
\../ |OO|||O|||O|| Mirroring the shadows of futurity
|| OO|||OO||O||O since 1993
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
|
