I was just doing a podcast interview about the book, happily getting into the weeds about the Metaverse and its history, when the host asked me a question that caused me to go blank:
"So what are some movies and TV shows about the Metaverse you recommend to listeners?"
By brain seriously went empty for what felt like three minutes before I finally mentioned a recent example (which I won't reveal until the podcast comes out).
Ready Player One would have been the most obvious example to mention right there; but while I liked the Spielberg adaptation just fine, it now leaves a bad aftertaste. (Which probably contributed to my brain freeze.) The movie doesn't add much to the original concept from Snow Crash, for one -- other than basically presenting it as a fun, single shard multi-player video game. Worse, depicting the virtual world as only being accessible through VR has created a unfeasible and frankly undesirable vision that's inadvertently caused enormous damage to the concept's evolution.
None of that's the fault of original author Ernest Cline, of course, and not taking away anything away from the novel's success! If anything, I'm faulting executives who only read and recommended his novel.
As I write in Making a Metaverse That Matters, the book was made required reading for new employees at Oculus before and after its acquisition by Facebook -- even if that meant ignoring earlier, more important readings:
Soon after launch, Horizon Worlds was barraged by a slew of bad press when a female journalist reported being sexually assaulted in the virtual world, with male avatars aggressively grinding up against her own avatar almost immediately after she logged into the world.
The violation was horrible, but completely predictable. Understanding and preparing for avatar-to-avatar harassment, especially directed at female avatars, has been a recurring virtual world challenge for decades.
Was no one on the team experienced enough to anticipate it?
As I soon learned, however, Meta was warned this would happen, many times -- it was a recurring theme in internal talks given by Jim Purbrick. But somehow, his warnings, recommendations, and best practice summaries were not centered.
"I was literally banging the drum at Oculus Connect two years in a row," Jim Purbrick told me with evident frustration. "I also told every new Oculus employee I met to read My Tiny Life in addition to Ready Player One, but the message didn't reach every part of the organization, sadly."
My Tiny Life is Julian Dibbell's classic account of virtual world sexual assault from the 1990s; Yes, the problem has been well-known and documented for that long.
Anyway, always look for new content to watch, and interesting reader recommendations to highlight!
A lot of my expectations for virtual reality were shaped by the original "Tron" film from 1982.
On TV, my early favourite is "Ship in a Bottle" from "Star Trek: The Next Generation" (12th episode of 6th season, 1993).
"The Matrix" from 1999 was nothing less than a cinematographic revolution.
"Ender's Game" from 2013 might be one of the most underrated virtual world films.
More recently, I was enjoying the Amazon series "Upload" (much more than the similarly themed Black Mirror episode "San Junipero").
I'm not sure whether "The Peripheral" counts as a virtual world series. The first few episodes are a wild ride in any case.
Posted by: Martin K. | Tuesday, June 13, 2023 at 11:28 PM
Back in the 90's when VR was still science fiction, some strange VR TV shows were released. The best was a mini-series called "Wild Palms" (1993) which I haven't seen in years, but available on You Tube in beautiful 4:3 ratio 480p video. The premise is that in 2007 a technology involving VR goggles and designer drugs would allow a person to travel anywhere experience it in all 5 senses. Virtual sex was the primary motivation of course.
An even goofier show was VR5, a TV series based on the premise that a woman was able to read people's minds by getting them on the phone and connecting to them via VR.
Posted by: Ariane Barnes | Wednesday, June 14, 2023 at 05:08 AM
Good recommendation, I (sorta) remember that one as being really cool!
Posted by: Wagner James Au | Wednesday, June 14, 2023 at 03:47 PM
The Future is Holodeck - https://youtu.be/dafUcwyC6vM
In 2003 I worked mounting Holospace Systems of Company BARCO
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/HoloSpace-de-Barco_fig4_47801237
Posted by: Eduardo Previdelli - Brazil | Wednesday, June 14, 2023 at 07:21 PM
I have really enjoyed "The Peripheral" both for its dazzling portrayal of the issues involved in dealing with a travelling into a new world while having one foot firmly planted in another. White the world's in The Peripheral are not exactly virtual and ore more jumps in time, all the basic dilemma's and fascinations are there and still apply.
One thing I did like about RPO the Movie is that it did show the classism that will be involved in how we enter virtual worlds, with the rich having access to the latest and greatest technology and the working class having to hack and trade their way in.
Posted by: Soda Sullivan | Sunday, June 18, 2023 at 10:48 AM