William Gibson Wants to See a Mixed Reality Photo Blog - UPDATE: Gibson Tweets of This Post & His Original Tweet

William Gibson wants to see a mixed reality photo blog featuring people who look like their avatars, he recently Tweeted. So if you're looking for a head nod from the author of Neuromancer and All Tomorrow's Parties (among many other masterpiece novels), here's your chance. I'll help get you started, with this composite of ironically ironic hipsters Stella Semaphore and Laika Saintlouis:

Also see Mr. Shoji Kimura. In fact, I'd love to see such a blog too, so if you do create one, let me know. If it's really good, I'll Tweet it, too. I don't know Gibson personally but I'm pretty sure several folks who follow me on Twitter do, so hey, you never know. Get that pattern recognition going!

UPDATE, 9:55PM: Speaking of Gibson, he did visit Second Life before, but his avatar definitely didn't look like Gibson: "I wound up being this grotesquely overweight, bright blue smurf. In a tutu. Nobody thought that was cool."

UPDATE 2, 11:30PM: William Gibson just Tweeted about this New World Notes post mentioning an earlier William Gibson Tweet, noting the pic of Laika and Stella, calling them "The most naturalistic SL avatars I've ever seen." Then went on to explain the context of the original Tweet:

"Original joke was about strangers who resemble much less naturalistic Second Life avatars. Of course they may not be SL users at all. So it's not actually a joke at the expense of SL users per se. Rather, it's about people who startling resemble crudely proximate images of humanity." I missed the context of the original Tweet, but I should have guessed, because I distinctly recall him once comparing FOX News anchorwomen or other dubiously synthetic people as looking like Second Life avatars. However, I will say SL avatars have grown both more realistic and imperfect since he visited in 2007. Click here for a look at some of them:

Comments

[Pepys Ponnier]

Sorry but Bill hasn't written anything worth reading since his first two trilogies.

Pity.

[Tateru Nino]

There have been a few attempts at this sort of thing, but from memory, they died off due to lack of interest.

[Tateru Nino]

Oh, actually, isn't what he asked for a blog with photos of people who look and dress like SL avatars, not like *their* SL avatars?

[Missy Restless]

Well, I didn't do that but I did this - http://missyrestless.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d32o5z4 and also this http://missyrestless.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d32nlp1 which places avatars in real life wikimedian contexts. Does that count William ?

[Ignatius Onomatopoeia]

One of my students managed it in Fall 2009. We were shocked at how identical the two of them looked.

It's no accident, perhaps, that this lone student from four sections was one who stuck around in SL for some time after the semester ended, to play in a virtual soccer league.

[Adeon Writer]

SLipsters is actually a reasonable example of the most popular fashion trend I've seen going around public SL areas lately.

My mixed reality photo still needs work. :)

[Levio Serenity]

Hope he's ready to see some fursuits! Heee

[Arcadia Codesmith]

I can see an inversion point emerging where avatars appear more "real" than real people, because they conform more closely to our expectations of what people ought to be rather than what they are.

Glancing around my office, out of 50 or so people in my line of sight, I see two or three that would blend into the average Second Life crowd. The rest of us would stand out as short, lumpy, odd-colored and/or aged misfits with bad skins and boring outfits.

We've had odd notions of the ideal human form since antiquity, of course. But now we can inhabit those ideal forms, leaving our gross and imperfect shells behind, only our fingers and eyes moving to feed the illusion of perfection into our conditioned brains.

The future sneaks up on you, doesn't it? Welcome to utopia/dystopia.

[bb]

Well no doubt this will sound icky to some people but I have two avies, one male and one female. Both have photorealistic skins of my real face. The one is exactly my real face and the other is photoshopped a bit to make me look like a female me. This one looks uncannilly like a hot version of my sister or my mom when she was younger.

But I still consider it to be *me* just like I consider the male one to be *me*.

I wonder what mr gibson would make of that...

[Gwen Smith]

Avatar me http://j.mp/fOfpRE and the flesh and blood me http://j.mp/embyL0 - relatively close, I suppose.

[Margot]

My husband actually does this all the time. We both play SL, and when we are out and about in RL, he'll point out people and say, "She's wearing an SL outfit," and it's usually something a little more outrageous than *normal* street clothes... or resembles an outfit he's seen my avatar wear. I thought we were the only two crazy people who discussed this, LOL.

[Ann Otoole InSL]

Disney found out what uncanny valley in with mars needs moms. Cost them dearly. Extreme realism is great for griefers that like to creep people out.

[Kaas Kistensen]

UPDATE 14, 06:52PM: William Gibson just Tweeted about New World Notes Tweeting about William Gibson just Tweeting a reply to New World Notes response to William Gibson's Tweet on the New World Notes mentioning that William Gibson just Tweeted about this New World Notes post mentioning an earlier William Gibson Tweet to explain the context of the original Tweet.

... the world has become so damn complex