The Sweet Spot

Attempting to walk away from driving the catastrophe driven by social media over the last 10 years, Facebook as decided to rename itself " Meta ". Most recently, what has stuck to their corporate shoe has been making teenagers feel bad about themselves. Facebook played a key role in giving us the Trump presidency and the January 5 insurrection. It has powered the "big lie". It made anti vax insanity into a business. In countries like Sri Lanka, it powered the ethnic violence that caused thousands of deaths. Facebook has the blood of thousands on its hands, but it's in trouble over making middle-class girls feel bad. Ah well. So that wasn't "Meta". That was those other guys - "Facebook". And of course the way Zuck and friends navigate their way out of responsibility is a characteristic mix of high tech, business opportunity and denialism that would make the Tobacco executives blush. But the tech "Meta" is playing with has a direc...

  Our ability to experience "virtual" worlds is not something new. Evolution has provided it as basic equipment along with our opposing thumbs. It's not a bug. It's a feature. On the most fundamental level, we are constantly experiencing the future and the past: the flow of time. This ability is essential to what we call purposeful behavior. We love to debate whether or not other animals have this ability and to what degree, but it's clear that we have it in spades. It is essential to who we are as humans. I am fascinated by how the brain produces the virtual world that we call "consciousness". It turns out to be quite a trick. Sense information arrives at different times. For example, sound and smell arrive with very little processing, but virtual information goes through massive complex analysis. Yet we experience it all at the "same time". We experience the decision to move  after  the brain has sent signals to move. Our experience slightly ...

DOROTHY, THIS IS NOT KANSAS ANYMORE The thinking behind this post started with a discussion about "Virtual Reality" (In Oculus / BigScreen) and widened almost out of control. There are so many issues it's hard to know where to start. As far as I know, the term "Virtual Reality" was coined by  Jared Lanier  - a very smart guy who is still very much around. However, once it's out there, a word entered the public domain and tends to change meaning very rapidly, especially when commercial entities get ahold of it. I will surrender to the  common usage , more or less co-opted by the makers of "VR" headsets, so, when I talk about "VR" I am regrettably talking about what you experience with a headset, such as  Oculus  (the one I use). Sadly, this leaves me without a word for whatever is happening in  Second Life  - a "world" I have explored for over 10 years. In my view, Second Life offers huge advantages over "VR". In fact, ...