[HN Gopher] Cyborgs vs. rooms, two visions for the future of com...
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Cyborgs vs. rooms, two visions for the future of computing
Author : surprisetalk
Score : 19 points
Date : 2025-10-19 13:16 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (interconnected.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (interconnected.org)
| exmadscientist wrote:
| One of the other important points about rooms and cyborgs is what
| partial participation looks like.
|
| If I don't like the room, I'm able to get up and leave. It might
| be difficult and annoying, and I might have to end up in the
| middle of the woods or desert or something, but I can do it.
| (Yes, we are increasingly making this harder and harder to do, by
| cyborging "the system" itself -- think things like the demise of
| cash, or the requirements for digital ID cards, or ... -- but you
| get the idea.)
|
| If I'm a cyborg, how do I leave? Can I leave? Do I even control
| myself anymore? Being a cyborg sounds great if I control my
| "wetware". Which I probably do not. (Do you control the computing
| device you're reading this message on? Really? The Linux kernel
| being open source might be really nice (it _is_ really nice), but
| even if you have the de jure ability to control it, do you have
| the practical ability to do so? And then there 's the hardware.
| Any way you trace the hardware, you'll end up with quartz wafers
| from Spruce Pine. Do you have _any_ way to replicate that?) There
| is no way in hell I 'd want to be someone else's cyborg, which
| means that with the state of the tech world, I don't want to be a
| cyborg at all.
| hrimfaxi wrote:
| I don't think the average person can appreciate the
| implications of trusting trust in a cyborg/augment world.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Ok the visitor cursors are really something else, it's unnerving.
| Super cool though.
| VegaKH wrote:
| I hated that. I didn't find it cool, just weird and
| distracting.
| strix_varius wrote:
| ...and now the site is down. Hope the cursors were worth it!
| ge96 wrote:
| what if... cursor using a cursor
| gwbas1c wrote:
| I used the F12 debugger to find the websocket, and then I
| blocked the cursorparty domain.
| Animats wrote:
| There's a "quiet mode" switch at the upper right to turn that
| off. At first, I thought it was something that led to more
| info, but apparently not.
|
| The author seems to have smashed the "AI" and "metaverse"
| concepts together to create - what?
| riffic wrote:
| This ultimately looks like the good old Centralization /
| Decentralization Pendulum playing out over and over and over
| again (Mainframes gave way to Personal Computers which gave way
| to Client/Server architecture to Mobile devices to Cloud to yet
| another neverending pendulum swing).
|
| Keep up, please?
| gwbas1c wrote:
| I don't think it has to be either-or.
|
| I suspect wearables will be cheaper than augmented rooms, so they
| will probably "win" in the sense that mobile phones outnumber
| desktop computers.
|
| That being said, I suspect the experience of being in an
| augmented room will be "worth it" and many people will pay big
| bucks for them.
| rapind wrote:
| Agreed, and rooms is obviously going to be out of reach for
| most of the world's population.
| lsy wrote:
| I think this leaves out what is probably the most likely future
| for this technology, having a similar destiny to most
| technologies as a _tool_. Both of these visions assume (I think
| incorrectly) a trend towards ubiquity, where either every
| interaction _you_ as a person have is mediated by computers, or
| where within a certain "room" every interaction _anyone_ has is
| mediated by computers.
|
| But it seems more likely that like other technologies developed
| by humanity, we will see that computers are not efficient for, or
| extensible to, every task, and people will naturally tend to
| reach for computers where they are helpful and be disinclined to
| do so when they aren't helpful. Some computers will be in rooms,
| some will get carried around or worn, some will be integrated
| into infrastructure.
|
| Similar to the automobile, steam powered motors, and electricity,
| we may predict a future where the technology totally pervades our
| lives, but in reality we eventually develop a sort of
| infrastructure that delimits the tool's use to a certain extent,
| whether it is narrow or wide. If that's the case then the work
| for the field is less about shoving the tech into every
| interaction, and more about developing better abstractions to
| allow people to use compute in an empowering rather than a
| disempowering way.
| moralestapia wrote:
| I believe both will happen and each one will develop its own
| cult-like following.
|
| If I had to choose today, I'd 100% go for the rooms. I don't
| really like wearing anything, and I like the idea of being able
| to just "walk out" of it, kind of like when I close my laptop.
| Only problem is tech might become omnipresent (it kind of already
| is) so one would not be able to just "leave".
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(page generated 2025-10-22 23:01 UTC)