Saturday, September 15, 2007

The Future is here and it’s not as cool as promised (part 3)

William Gibson’s “Neuromancer” came out at a time just prior to the PC revolution. During the mid-80’s, large companies used mainframe style computers, small companies had a single computer and the vast majority homes didn’t have a computer at all. Hackers were lonely guys sitting in their basements dialing randomly with their acoustic couplers, hoping to get in touch with any kind of data link they could access. There wasn’t an internet. Communication happened mostly through bulletin boards. People that used computers were strange folk that lived in a world that 99% of the population couldn’t really understand. From that perspective, I can understand how Gibson thought the future would lead to hackers actually living “online” in a virtual reality, accessing a world that most folks would never see, stealing valuable information from evil megacorporations. It sounded cool. I think that everybody reading “Neuromancer” probably pictured themselves “decking in” to a virtual world and dueling their way into company’s systems.

Then the PC revolution happened. Computers became accessible to everybody. Everybody could get to the internet via their local library. The cool secret online world became mired by what’s known as the “lowest common denominator”. Interfaces like a jack in the base of your head instead became a mouse, keyboard and monitor. There was a short time where we tried to use virtual reality helmets, but using them for more then a few minutes would leave the average person with eye strain and a sore neck.

I think the “virtual world” presented in “Neuromancer” was flawed from the start. Nobody would spend that kind of money to create these exotic interfaces like towers of data when only 1% of the world would see it. The virtual reality we got instead makes a lot of sense. Computers have to be very accessible if your grandmother needs to use it to get her taxes done and it’s doubtful that you could convince her to implant a device into her cerebral cortex.

As for what happens in the actual online virtual world of today, we shouldn’t be surprised. Hacking into companies may seem great to 5% of the population, but most people don’t want to deal with identity theft. Instead we have the internet and it takes care of what humanity really needs to survive. We have porn to take care of our sexual needs. Email and forums take care of our emotional needs. Shopping sites like Amazon.com and shop.safeway.com allow us to take care of the physical needs. We’re set. Our online virtual world doesn’t sound as cool as the secret world that Gibson dreamed of, but at least this one is a lot more useful.

2 comments:

Morgue said...

I don't have a very clear recollection of Neuromancer but my impression had always been that it was the cyberdeck itself that created the symbolic topography of the net as an interpretation of it for human consumption. Maybe that was in Snow Crash, I'm not sure.

At any rate, I think if "jacking in" was made a reality, it would be huge. Some people already practically live their lives in MMORPGs like WoW, or virtual worlds like Second Life. If people could project themselves right into those characters, we might have a "BTL" situation, a la Red Dwarf.

Ixtlilton said...

I think "Jacking in" would be polarizing. Young to middle age people would probably be okay with it, because we've had the idea of "jacking in" for a good chunk of their lives. I think that just as many people would be against it the idea. They'd see it for what a lot of people would use it for...virtual sex, and god is probably against that in their world view.

If I remember correctly, BTL was a bad thing in the end. How can it be so bad when Tabula Rasa and World of Warcraft feel so good?