Wednesday, March 5, 2008

there's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead.

When Hiro Protagonist slices the Nipponese businessman to bits in the Black Sun, the body does not behave realistically.
Surprisingly (he looks so real when he's in one piece), no flesh, blood, or organs are visible through the new crossections that Hiro's sword made through his body ... It breaks the metaphor. The avatar is not acting like a real body. It reminds all The Black Sun's patrons that they are living in a fantasy world. People hate to be reminded of this. (102)

As the passage mentions, the Metaverse dwellers enjoy fooling themselves into believing this digitial world is the real world. Many properties of the Metaverse have been engineered to mirror properties of reality. Gravity exists, people own property, you must physically move your body to get somewhere, etc. However, the Metaverse falls short of recreating reality in a few key places, such in its response to death.

Part of the reason for these shortcomings is a lack of programming. The avatars in the Metaverse (and Second Life, for that matter) can only respond to events they have been programmed to respond to. As no one bothered to program a realistic avatar response to being dismembered, the avatar behaved unrealistically. I experienced a similar phenomenon in Second Life when I walked into a "lake." My avatar fell through the blue lake-like surface. But underneath that surface, there was dry ground. I could look up and see the flat surface of the lake above me. I simply walked right up the side of the bank, through the surface, and back onto the shore. There was no swimming, and no simulated wet hair when I climbed out.

Will these shortcomings of reality be avoided in the simulacra of the future? Is it even possible? If every response to every possible action must be pre-programmed, than I believe the answer is no. Bizarre, creative beings that we are, we humans will always eventually push our simulated selves into situations they will be unable to deal with realistically.

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