Stephenson's Snow Crash revisited

I want a Rat Thing for Christmas.

== danny d.

Perhaps I am alone in thinking this way, but I do not see added facial manipulation/more sophisticated gestures as a boon to sl.

In our Avies, we have created personas--some more like the individual at the keyboard than others. These 'masks' allow us unfettered access to realms we could or would never be able to explore in rl.

Many have gone to great creative lengths to make their Avies unique--tremendous expressions of individuality (often the general appearance of an Avie says more about the human manipulating the controls than gestures ever could). To impress a rl image onto the face of an Avie, would, I believe, staunch this particular avenue of personal expression.

In addition, one of the most valuable aspects of sl is the general reliance on language (and a few primitive gestures and emoticons) to express very complex thoughts and emotions. Often, meaning or intention gets lost and misunderstanding abounds, but we, as a community, are forced to rely on language, alone, to communicate. This exercise, I believe, makes us better and stronger communicators in all areas of our lives (both sl and rl).

(I think I can take ABD off of my CV now. )

Actualy, I just thought... If we ever get the ability to make custom facial gestures, through poser, or whatever, we may actualy see this.

But don't some gestures include the face?

I know I've played with the standard "/no" and "/no!" gestures, and the second one gives me a definite scowl...is that only possible from the standard library, and not in BVH uploads?

== danny d.

Perhaps if smileys could be translated into appropriate facial gestures? Same way writing afk automatically puts your avie in afk mode?

I read "Snow Crash" and "the Diamond Age". I think Stephenson has some very good ideas, but he is pretty mediocre at characters and really bad at stories. Allways throws out a lot of plot, and then fails to resolve it in the end. But the ideas, ah! the ideas! Perhaps that's the problem? People who are mostly into the ideas in science fiction will love Stephenson, people who are into characters and story will not.

-nim, wannabe ractor

"If poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world, science-fiction writers are its court jesters. We are Wise Fools who can leap, caper, utter prophecies and scratch ourselves in public. We can play with Big Ideas because the garish motley of our pulp origins makes us seem harmless."

Though, ironicly, this was said by Bruce Sterling in the preface of a William Gibson novel, I think it's still rather true... Even if (being a writer myself) I think the whole 'elite writer-king' mythos that most writers try to foist on the world is utter bunk; 99% of what writers write is just as meaningless as 99% of what people say. It's just that with writers, the 1% that is meaningfull is spread to other people to be read and remembered.

That said, regarding the deck/goggle/laser interface, I have three comments:

One: The gargoyle suit clearly used a system where the goggles themselves were the data transmitters, not the deck. Thus, I am perfectly comfortable with any statement about the way the deck functions earlier to be in 'error'', as silly as that may sound: It's an un-needed complication of the system.

Two: I was under the impression that not everything that Hiro did was translated into his avatar, nor was everything his avatar did a direct reflection of himself: The metaverse is really, really big, and Hiro walked around alot in it, even when he(his meat self) was stationary. I suspect that most movement is handled with some variation of more conventional controls, perhaps optical tracking or even simple buttons. It was only when he needed to step outside the boundries of what a basic avatar would do that he needed to physicly do it himself; or when honor/pride demanded it. (Either case could apply to the sword fight) For supporting evidence, remember that Hiro rested his katana... On the table, I believe, or perhaps beside him, it's been a while. But in the metaverse he was wearing them, and 'drew' them when his real-life self picked them up. Clearly this is not a 1:1 translation of movements... More akin to a gesture-recognition system like we have for mice currently.

Three: Yes, any system that could do what the metaverse/deck equipment could could probably pick up emotional cues - eyes, mouth, posture, etc. Presumably, this would be scalable on the users end of it, first of all... We do get the impression that it's not universal, that some avatars and gear (such as the wal-mart avatars and the pay-terminals) don't seem as 'lifelike'. So, from that, I think it would be safe to assume that any such system could be fooled, much the same way hiro used picking his sword up to make the system have him 'draw' it. Or, failing that, just learn to watch your emotional cues: It's a skill that isn't easy to learn, but far from impossible.

Danny, that is true, but they don't cover the wide range of emotions, and each persons facial expressions can be different, or unique, just like their walking, etc.

Rei, good observations, it makes sense that those would be the cases. Hiro also makes mention that walking can be difficult for some people in the Metaverse. So based on that we can assume that in fact there is some skill needed to control the avatars rather than just walking around.

So I think you're right about that. That the reason he was outside with his Katana was perhaps that he went into a more emotional mode, or just wanted to do both, or had to do the complex movements in real life because the system couldn't handle it through whatever input it usualy takes.

I had perhaps a slightly different impression of Snowcrash, having read it only after having come to SL... But I only needed to invision a crowded area in SL to understand this concept.

*bump*
"Ooops, sorry"
*bump"
"sry"
*bump*
"stop it plz"
*bump*
"Griefer!"

Hah! Yes, exactly!

I also imagine the psychological changing aspects of the Metaverse would make it kinda like a mind-warp for some people. Such as, in large crowds going *through* people instead of coliding with them. I imagine concepts like that, or others, would take some getting used to for some. I remember the first time I experienced VR with a helmut and stuff at an arcade, that took some getting used to and made me feel a bit nausicious.