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MetaVerse
MeatballWiki | RecentChanges | Random Page | Indices | CategoriesA VirtualReality construct that came from NealStephenson's SnowCrash. Some interesting ideas:
- Races, but all AvatarAgents could move at the same speed (as it was a VirtualReality)--unless you slammed into something, at which point you "slowed" instanteneously to a standstill. Thus, the distinguishing factor was who had the best UserInterface.
- Public terminals would project black-and-white avatars as grainy as bad faxes.
- The hackers who built the metaverse put in some nifty "plumbing" only they really knew about. (Is this really feasible? especially with security through OpenSource?)
- Sure its feasible. Wiki:TheKenThompsonHack makes it all but certain there's "plumbing" in your computer right now.
- The MetaVerse is more of a web service than a conventional application: there's no way to prove the running sword-fighting code wherever you are at the moment is the same as the OpenSource version. It might have backdoors you don't know about. It also seems like people capable of understanding the source code are few and far between, and for the most part already part of the "they" who know about the plumbing. --MarkPaschal
Before you take this too seriously, the MetaVerse is just a take-off/parody of WilliamGibson's Matrix. People would never cram into virtual trains to go from one point to another if they could just go directly to their destination, and there's nothing preventing them from doing that . . .
. . . Unless you think of the router network as a very convoluted train system.
Part of the quirkiness of the MetaVerse is that you *can't* simply enter anywhere you want. If you're logged on from work, you'll enter through your company's building in the MetaVerse, and from there need to progress to your destination in a "contiguous" manner - ie not teleporting. Without giving stuff away, there are "life or death" chases in the MetaVerse in SnowCrash. Totally meaningless if users could teleport. The MetaVerse creators added restrictions like not being able to overlap with the environment and size restrictions, in order to give more of a "reality" feel to it. The "contiguous movement" was another of these restrictions. Of course, hackers could override those restrictions, as they did in The Black Sun, the coolest club in the MetaVerse.
Actually now that I think of it, in the Matrix films, once you're in it, contiguous travel is also required. You have to drive, fly, catch trains, etc. Even those "back doors" are contiguous if you think of them as tunnels with a set, non arbitrary destinations.