Visionaries III - The Race to "Greater Virtual Reality"

"Greater Virtual Reality" - You heard it here from me first, yes, as of 12/12/2007 14:06 pm (GMT +8:00) I coined that term.

Anyway, what is it? Simple. It's about the first not being the best. The idea of "Virtual Reality" or computer simulated worlds has been around since what? 1970's?

Wikipedia article:

The term artificial reality, coined by Myron Krueger, has been in use since the 1970s but the origin of the term virtual reality is uncertain. It has been credited to The Judas Mandala, a 1982 science fiction novel by Damien Broderick, where the context of use is somewhat different from that defined above. The earliest use cited by the Oxford English Dictionary is in a 1987 article entitled "Virtual reality",^[1] but the article is not about VR technology. The VR developer Jaron Lanier claims that he coined the term.^[2]

We've seen the idea being thrown here and there, applied to this game to that movie, ad infinitum. So what? Picture this.

Dannybuntu says:

I believe that the development of most computer technology is geared towards virtual reality in one form or another.

Man tries to simulate his reality because of his desire to escape "what is".

The desire for escape stems from our finitude - whereas boundless avenues exist as tools to erase that finitude to create an infinity of possibilities.

Its not only about the nice graphics in Second Life, Sims, WOW, etc. Its the world that they create. This is inarguable.

Chip companies are geared towards making their processors faster - for what??? Ask Gordon E. Moore.

Almost every measure of the capabilities of digital electronic devices is linked to Moore's Law: processing speed, memory capacity, even the resolution of digital cameras. All of these are improving at (roughly) exponential rates as well. This has dramatically changed the usefulness of digital electronics in nearly every segment of the world economy.^[6] Moore's Law describes this driving force of technological and social change in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

The operant word is social change. Innovation is the second key word. But I believe that it merely plays the part of an illusion or delusion. Companies want to reach out to more people in the world. Advocacies want to extend their tentacles to more minds and converts. All of these ultimately boil to one thing.

The ultimate power is the power to create an alternate reality that is significant because of significance. There is no typographical error on the previous sentence, you've read it right. The significance lies in being significant. A company is insignificant if it does not make marks on the minds of others. A person is insignificant if it cannot make a mark in the whole. This is compounded by the new world that we live in. A world of billions of entities to speak of - each and all clamoring to be unique. Each and all - in essence finitely bound by the physical world.

That is why we have avatars. That is why we have profiles. That is why we have facebooks, friendsters, myspaces, and all of those social networking sites.

That is why we have RPGs, MMORPGs.

That is why we have e-bay profiles, reputations, e-commerce trader profiles, good, bad, digg, buried, slashdotted or not.

These are all customized and 99% falsified identities. "Why 99%?" you might ask. Because I have not encountered a personal profile that is not made to look good. Thumbs up sign.

All profiles are a reflection of what a person wants the others to view him. This becomes more pronounced in instances where the virtual reputation is tied intrinsically to the physical world.

Continued...