Upload VR Excited About "Matrix-Style Apocalypse" Tech

Wachowski siblings: Let's create a visually powerful metaphor which expresses how our hyper-consumerist/reductionist mass media culture blinds us to the reality of our oppression.

VR geeks: LET'S TOTALLY BUILD THAT COOL THING.

Yes, seriously:

Two researchers in Estonia are figuring out ways to trick your brain that are effective enough to elicit physical responses, and push the sensations of virtual reality immersion way beyond anything that’s been experienced so far... “We all know what optical illusions are and we also know what nervous system allusions. We all have felt stepping on a stand still escalator. That little millisecond swoop in your stomach that tells you something isn’t right,” said Nieler. “There must be a way to convince the brain we are actually physically feeling something. That’s what we’re trying to crack.”

Like every technology with the potential for horrible repercussions (drones, atomic bombs, etc.) there is an admitted cool factor to this, but what's fascinating is how Upload VR -- the media outlet Robert Scoble is now working for as a VR evangelist -- eagerly embraces the dystopia. As Upload VR's Joe Durbin puts it in his final sentence:

VR on this level sounds like a recipe for a Matrix-style apocalypse, but you know what? I don’t care. Sign me up.

Sounds like he's been wanting to sign up for years. It makes me wonder (as it often does): Do most VR enthusiasts even understand the science fiction that inspires them, or do they only consider it to be really well-written design documents? Then again, Metaverse-inventor Neal Stephenson is now literally working for a metaverse company, and surely he knows more than anyone else that the reason the Metaverse is so popular in Snow Crash is because the real world in his novel has gone utterly to hell.

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Comments

[Ezra]

Should Christine be taken as a cautionary tale against self-driving cars?

[Adeon Writer]

Everyone always forgets that in the lore of The Matrix, the real world was really, really sucky.

[Adeon Writer]

(And you couldn't fly)

[JohnC]

As much as this whole world of VR interests me,I resign myself to the fact that most of what I hear about it, and most likely will do, for the foreseeable future will be nothing more than hype, meaningless games and short lived experiments that will fade as quick as the fascination for the new. It is quite possible that VR may change the world in some way one day, but I doubt it will be any time soon

[Iggy]

Sign Scoble up. Good riddance. Sign all the VR evangelists up.

I'll take the Garden of the Real, plus a bit of augmentation. Good to see that we have Jarod Lanier on this side of the Matrix with us.

[melponeme_k]

@Iggy

RIGHT ON! I'll happily stay in reality along with Jaron Lanier and fight the good fight for a better human existence.

All the others can go fool themselves into thinking that they have reached VR rapture. In fact I'm waiting for all of them to check into the nearest upload center so they can all get out of our hair. But it's taking way too long.

[Ezra]

More hot takes from a blog for VR enthusiasts, by a VR enthusiast.

[melponeme_k]

@Ezra

When "VR Enthusiasts" by and large express disdain regarding the newest VR Craze, there is a problem.

We are their core audience. I've never seen an industry so intent on throwing out the audience that pays them money. NEVER. Its flabbergasting. If people who have spent 10 years or more in the only successful VR ever made aren't your audience....WHO THE F**** ARE?

This is akin to a Southern Belle turning away her only gentleman caller because she doesn't like the way he wears his bow tie. I mean hell honey, they aren't exactly lining up at the door.

[Ezra]

@melponeme_k

The hundreds of thousands of VR enthusiasts pre-ordering the Rift and Vive are the core audience. Displeased Second Life expats that want something entirely different than VR is offering, the glory days of 2006 as far as I can tell, not so much.

Second Life isn't VR in the sense the rest of the world is thinking about VR nowadays. VR requires a VR headset.

[melponeme_k]

@Ezra

Second Life is VR. Changing the name isn't going to make the rose change its smell. I love how techs play semantics to change reality. Its a laugh riot.

And what VR did Isaac "Children of the Corn" Luckey use to demo his baby? SECOND LIFE. The only successful VR in existence. Probably the first and the last at this rate.

[Ezra]

@melponeme_k

Palmer Luckey literally refuted the idea that SL users are VR enthusiasts, and only even considered SL a VR platform through the use of the Rift viewer.

http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2015/11/palmer-luckey-vr-second-life.html

"I don't classify people with little interest in using VR devices as hardcore VR enthusiasts. They might be classified as virtual world enthusiasts, but that is a very different thing, and much closer to the Minecraft community than the VR community."

I don't see those outside of SL's community playing semantics; it's usually LL and SL users misnormering what Second Life is.

Call it a game; Steam and Twitch don't care, they don't see it as a game so it can't be listed.

Tack on an Oculus Rift viewer, and with or without, call it VR, Palmer Luckey and the headset-centric VR community at large doesn't care.

Call it an education platform or virtual place to do physical business, whatever, few care.

Second Life has never been one single thing nor the center of anything, and that's fine 'til folks get indignant and feel that Second Life deserves an amount of respect and consideration that it doesn't.

[Adeon Writer]

Second Life is many things for many people, but one thing it's absolutely not is VR - except for the few SL residents who have a VR headset. And then, it's not very good VR.

[melponeme_k]

@Ezra

LOL you are so deluded, you must be deep within the thickets of Silly Valley. I don't fan Second Life. There is plenty about it that is wrong and plenty that is good. But to say it isn't VR is ridiculous. The goggles are a mere piece of equipment.

"Second Life has never been one single thing nor the center of anything, and that's fine 'til folks get indignant and feel that Second Life deserves an amount of respect and consideration that it doesn't."

It does deserve respect because it is the only VR making money. There have been many that have come and gone and crashed and burned. But SL is still the only game in town. And Silly Valley HATES it because it didn't turn into what they wanted VR to be. So they decide to destroy it so they can say "Here you want what we want to give you. No more and no less." THIS despite what makes money and is still making money is totally ignored. No other industry would kill a golden goose for sheer ideology. Only in Silly Valley. But then again the majority of its citizens would rather let their hometown Ballet Company and other Arts organizations die rather than attend their performances. Maybe if Children of the Corn Luckey built some phony VR glasses that people could wear and walk around town with, the Silly Valley folk can pretend they are in VR.