Posts by Rog in NZ

Consultant plays Metaverse MythBuster. Here's why they're wrong

Re: MetaVerse

Thank you for reminding me of Philip K Dick's dystopian view of this particular fantasy world.

If we're considering "We Can Remember it ..." and looking for multi-player options then I'd also offer up PKD's "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch" (1965). Settlers on a barren and unpleasant Mars setup "layouts" for Barbie and Ken style dolls then took drugs that allowed them to communally assume Ken and Barbie identities and live Ken and Barbie lifestyles inside the layout (experiencing it as if it were real life). Multiple participants - although they were physically co-located and all the men together were Ken and all the women were Barbie. Basically, PKD found his daughters' Barbie dolls freaky and weird and so put them in one of his freakiest and weirdest novels :) Also the Empathy Box in "Do Androids Dream...".

A long way from modern VR, but in-line with the proposed trope (and probably more so than "We Can Remember It"). As-per other comments, the point about Snow Crash was it coined the specific term "Metaverse" even if not inventing the general idea of an artificially created, consistent, shared and fully immersive hallucination.

No wristjob, please, we're Apple fans: Just 10% would buy the Apple Watch

Fanboi mentality - nailed, years ago, by the Onion (as always) ...

http://www.theonion.com/video/apple-introduces-revolutionary-new-laptop-with-no,14299/

"I'll buy almost anything if it's shiny and it's made by Apple"

</satire> (if you hadn't guessed)

IoT cup claims 'instant' identification of what's in it

Or another Douglas Adams prophecy?

Surely the end-game is much more obvious than mere poison detectors or allergy avoiders. It's one small step from this ...

"... we developed a sensor that could instantly analyse the nutritional content of what’s inside a beverage … on a molecular level"

... to this ...

"When the 'Drink' button is pressed it makes an instant but highly detailed examination of the subject's taste buds, a spectroscopic analysis of the subject's metabolism, and then sends tiny experimental signals down the neural pathways to the taste centres of the subject's brain to see what is likely to be well received. ... However, no-one knows quite why it does this because it then invariably delivers a cupful of liquid that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea."

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