| This is my problem with the metaverse conceptualized in
| Snow Crash-
Haven't read this. Sounds like I'll have to *sigh*...
| it constricts us to an already known
| paradigm- this reality (TR) The really wonderful aspect
| of VR is that it can trancend some of these paradigms
| (driving down streets with addresses, using trolleys,
| motorcycles, etc) Why should I be forced to drive
| through a virtual housing development or comercial
| strip? Why couldn't I be able to teleport wherever I
| wanted?
Well, this has been a persistent debate back at
least as far as Islandia, of course, when "topology"
("geometry" would have been a more apt word) first
(?) became a major topic.
One consideration is that what makes a world "real"
is -precisely- it's limitations: Not being able to
go through walls is what makes walls real and
significant; Not being able to fly is what makes
gravity real and significant; Not being able to
manufacture cash at will is what makes it real
and significant.
Remove all limits to your world, and you have
precious little world left.
This isn't to say that I'm squarely in the
no-teleporting camp: My worlds tend to have
teleporters, and I/we tend to use them.
But I regret it at times, and listen with
sympathy to the builders who feel teleporting
destroys appreciation for good building,
discouraging people from bothering to
provide good building, and ultimately
leaves the world thereby impoverished.
| And why do I have to be forced into a ground
| plane and horizon line? It is my fear that the more
| people conceptualize the metaverse as an extension of
| TR, the more it will be corrupted by TR. Let go of the
| ground and the concept of real estate- VR is
| limitless.
I sympathize in spirit. Books came in to vogue not by
being better than live storytellers at what
storytellers do best, but by providing unique
advantages of their own. Radio and TV likewise. VR
would do better to emphasize it's unique strengths than
to try vainly to out-real reality, a contest at which
it cannot help but always come off second best.
But ...
"Form frees!"
Atonal and even "freer" music has yet to drive
staid old major/minor form music off the airwaves:
The forms are not just pointless restrictions, but
enabling tools, a vocabulary of discourse.
Eliminating the ground plane and horizon line
may have novelty value -- but you've lost a
part of your spatial vocabulary thereby, a
visual adjective for your visual nouns.
The same house may feel quite different in
a cozy valley vs in an awe-inspiring eyrie
perch, and it's the ground plane and horizon
line which make the difference, no?
If discarding them drives you to create
something even better to fill the resulting
vacuum, so much the better! But "freeing"
yourself by discarding all your vocabulary
will impoverish rather than enrich your
creations.
White noise is utterly free of constraint -- and
utterly boring. It is patterns which bring
interest to a world, and every pattern you
introduce is of necessity a contraint introduced,
a freedom given up.
| Unreal estate is a better description.
One of the things I like best about VR is that
is forces people to confront old preconceptions
head on.
When reality provides all your constraints for
you, you can be lazy about understanding what they
really provide, and how they really work. When
you can create anything imaginable, however,
the crutch is gone, and you have to confront
truly analysing what you want.
It has been said that the ultimate cruelty is
to grant their dreams. Well, now we -can- grant
our dreams, and will have to decide whether we
really want to live with them after all.
Life is simpler when dreams stay safely distant!
Cynbe