When 3-D movies came in we all assumed it was the way of the future. But they died out.
Yet 3-D sound is the only kind you have had in a modern theatre for decades.
Virtual Reality was the cyberspace equivalent of 3-D in the movies. It looked like the beginning of a cyberspace we could actually LIVE in.
First we would see it in 2-D. Then we would smell it. Then we would taste and feel it. It would be our world.
Of course it will require a lot of advances in computers before such things are practical. But the failure of 3-D makes me wonder if we really WANT it.
When I say “We” I am not referring to the wild cries of the Politically Correct Amish. I mean the real people who buy things. They not only didn’t WANT 3-D, but many more black-and-white movies were made and BOUGHT in the last decades than 3-D movies.
When we do get the technology, will enoguh people want to live in cyberspace to make it economically viable?
As I said below, I find ther real future hard to talk about, because what I am saying will only make sense to those who are not worrying themselves silly over a Frankenstein Complex.
It is not there is anything “unnatural” about living in cyberspace that bothers me. What everybody, including the Amiish, consider “natural” today is exactly as “natural” as cyberspace.
So I will approve the comments that express horror at this but I’ve heard them before.
Cyberspace is all the space we ever wanted without bothering any thing else.
Cyberspace holds potential not just for uisng our five senses, but for extending them and keeping us protected while doing it.
But that failure of 3-D haunts me.
Next I will return to the question of a future of bigness or smallness and see if it make it possible for those who wish to live in a cyberspace.
#1 by Elizabeth on 05/07/2006 - 5:28 pm
I think the current gas crisis will embarrass more of the media monopoly.
If you’re _serious_ about saving gasoline and other oil products, you will do
everything you can to make it easy for people to do things, including work,
over the internet.
If you’re _not_ serious, you cry, you scream, you act as a human roadblock to
progress, _demanding_ in-person “face time” at the office, at school, etc.
I’m about to return to the maelstrom because there are so few job opportunities
outside the big metropolitan areas. It wasn’t fun and it wasn’t cheap living in
the D.C. area, but the D.C. area’s bigger than it used to be (in terms of
commuting area) and there’s now the internet, so it’s easier to find like-minded
people in that area. And telecommuting is a possibility in at least some of
the Federal government. AND several Federal agencies are moving well out of the
D.C. area — which has nothing to do the current energy crisis, but I’m very happy
that that is finally happening.