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Mixed-Reality Party In DC and Second Life
Jerry23 writes "This Saturday The Happening will bring Second Life to first life. The Electric Sheep Company, a new metaverse developer, has virtually recreated R&B Coffee in Washington DC for use in a mixed-reality party and benefit for the DC art scene and several local nonprofits. Real people will mingle with avatars via realtime video projections in the real and virtual R&B spaces, and MAKE Magazine's Phillip Torrone will be on-hand showing off his homemade Virtual Reality headsets and gloves. The whole world is invited to attend in DC or Second Life, whichever's closer for you." This is just conceptually a weird idea to me.
...I mean, virtually, these people are not obese, smell horrible, or live trite, meaningless lives in their parents' basements. Why would you want to show up in person and shatter your suspension of disbelief?
1) What's "The Happening"?
2) What's "Second Life"?
3) What's "The Electric Sheep Company"?
4) How are they developing Stephenson's "Metaverse"?
5) What's "R&B Coffee"?
6) What's a "Mixed Reality Party"
This could very well be the most pretentious article posted to Slashdot I've ever seen, and that's saying a lot.
Traditionally one replies to such questions en masse with the simple one liner "RTFA", rather than creating a 24 line content-free reply.
Conclusion: the Empire squashes the Federation like a bug. Accept it.
Snowcrash is the first novel I've ever stopped reading halfway through. It's atrocious. The story is miserable and poorly written, and Stepehenson's techno-slang is ridiculous and amounts to dropping the first syllable off of words. For a while, I had no idea how Stephenson was able to trick people into thinking he was worthwhile. Then I hung out with some hackers.
Seriously, this is a disturbing trend - just *why*? Spending an odd hour or two is one thing, obsessing over this stuff and paying huge sums of money for virtual things
What, like shares? Or numbers in a bank account?