So that’s why he has dead, soulless shark eyes and a poorly-fitted meatsuit?, he died in the simulation?
Why does he have barbecue sauce on his bookshelf?
Enidigm
4463
It’s like a lattice of coincidence. One poster says brisket by accident, another guy finds a random bottle of bbq sauce where it shouldn’t be.
You eat a lot of acid, Enidigm, back in the hippie days?
I’ve been reading this hefty tome. It’s real good. It speaks to my sensibility and many of the concerns I have with social media, but it makes the case a lot better than I ever could. Harvard, go figure!
Of course it isn’t just about social media, it covers the whole surveillance infrastructure of search engines, smart devices and social media that work to extract (and inevitably influence) everything you experience in your life.
It is masterfully written and breaks down the illusion of social media as a harmless tool.
Social media certainly doesn’t want to be harmless. It has no concern for the welfare of its users. It only makes an effort in order to protect itself from interference by the people and the law.
I think it’s possible for someone to maintain a healthy use of social media, but only in the sense that you can maybe do a little cocaine every now and then, and still be fine.
It works because you’re a very healthy person, not because cocaine is good for you. And it only works if you strictly limit your use, which is where a lot of people including myself would fail.
Same as guns indeed exist to kill people, social media in its current form exists to surveil and manipulate them. Connecting them is just the means to that end.
It won’t lead to anything good. We aren’t being served so much as we’re being farmed and directed. I think the sooner we come around to that, the better.
Thrag
4467
This is indeed the proper terminology.
I imagine your home space would have Steve Bannon’s courtroom on one side and a loop of Richard Spencer getting punched on the other.
Thrag
4471
What do you call those type of prints where the image changes depending on the angle you look at it? One of those where are you walk by the Spencer scene plays out.
Edit: answering my own question…
Lenticular Print
What exists now are all steps towards 3D photo-real virtual/holographic humans, with life-like one-to-one facial and body movement mapping, all attained by wearing something akin to a pair of glasses. That’s the goal they’re working towards.
They also seem to be really focusing on collaborative remote virtual workspaces, where everything we work with now computer-wise is replaced with the glasses paired with a neuron-impulse wristband for mouse-like control work, all web/cloud/streaming-based.
‘Meta’ showed some of this prototype-stuff working during the recent Connect VR/AR presentation they did, the one where they announced the new company name.
I find it all pretty exciting, long-term visionary kind of stuff.
Houngan
4473
Sure, I get that, but it feels like true self-driving cars in the real world. Everyone was really excited and the hype and marketing got a lot of smart folks thinking it was just around the corner, but it turns out not so much. The idea of a Snow Crash or Ready Player One virtual world is certainly intriguing, but there are just such huge real-world problems in getting there. Take compute out of it, I can just assume that we’ll get either miniaturized compute and storage to the necessary point, or more likely develop super-fast processing that takes most of that out of the picture, but the tech is still way behind on the meatspace issues like what it takes to wrap somebody’s head in a black box and still present things to their eyes that are near-great, not perfect. AR was the dream, but it was wildly overpromised.
I’d guess we’re still 20 years away from having a no-joke face rig that isn’t an analogue of what we’re using today, just with better screens. After all, we know lenses. We’ve been doing lenses for centuries, and it’s all still very compromised by the sheer physics of trying to wrap a full-human-POV presentation layer around a spherical eyeball. But hey, just my thoughts.
I think we know this stuff is not just around the corner, in fact they said as much in the recent presentation. I hope I see it in my lifetime, and it’s pretty exciting to see it slowly evolving and taking form! :)
All the pieces for this are working in some way already, but naturally yeah there is a huge amount of work and advancement still needed, especially with regards to miniaturisation and optics. And they’re putting a huge amount of work in, with developments on both their VR lens side, and their AR holo display side.
But I can see why they wanted to rebrand. None of that future vision really belongs under the umbrella of ‘Facebook, the social media web service’. (I’m sure there was an element of trying to distance from controversy also)
Houngan
4475
100%, I’m no fan of Facebook having their hand on the tiller for reasons that I think are obvious to anyone. Oculus just happened to hit the market correctly, such as the small market is, and also move into untethered, which seems to be the only possible future. I’m far more enthusiastic about the ecosystem finally coming on board to where the hardware is commoditized and the actual apps and games define what’s desirable. Oculus, Steam, HTC, PlayStation, we’re in the early years where everyone is trying to force dominance for monetary gain. Facebook/Oculus will probably win that, provided that Apple doesn’t figure out something evolutionary.
Don’t be enthusiastic, “all” they want is to be the intermediary who controls the platform and payment system of online events where the same real life exclusivity perks get replicated. You don’t want to be the loser on the last row with a cheap shirt and pants, or not go to the exclusive networking event with an expensive suit, would you? You better apply to be a virtual food server for a few hundred times, then.
Houngan
4477
Interesting take, but I’m Gen X, the whole idea that a virtual space matters in terms of cosmetics is lost on me. Much like real life to be honest, I would think that post teen years people stop buying louvered windshield wipers to stand out on their hoopty Civic.
ShivaX
4478
I made it 12 seconds and 5 of those was because the video had already started.
