Fame

Is it any wonder, I reject you first?

 

There are (as one may have it) a number of things which strike me as an oddity of juxtaposition within my life. Through situational awareness, it can be said that I am suddenly surprised by how people react to my presence. It isn’t to say that I suddenly just now became surprised, but it is something that I consistently forget and then am reminded of.

 

To this end, the topic of this blog (journal rambling) is that of perception and (for lack of better word) fame.

 

 

 

I’ve never considered myself famous in the more common sense, but more often than not I am treated as a sort of celebrity depending on the circumstances. It seems to rear up when I least expect it – for instance when talking to actual celebrities and while I find myself flattered that they take the time to speak with me, I come to find out that they are actually a fan of me.

 

That takes a while to sink in, to be honest.

 

I don’t think it ever really does sink in to my conscious mind too long, but it does just long enough to make me go “Oh... wow...” and then in a few days it wears off and I somehow manage to repress that memory like it never happened.

 

But somewhere in the back of my mind, I know it is still there lingering. I didn’t actually forget that I’m a celebrity. I just seem to do a really good job convincing myself that I’m not and acting like I’m not. Maybe (despite opinions to the contrary) I am actually a bit humble. I know in my persona I act like I’m hot stuff but like Andy Warhol it’s really just a front.

 

I am (to the public eye) mostly just a persona. A fabrication of intellectual bad-ass propped up by perceptions of genius and brilliance. The problem is, I’ve never seen myself like that, even when I know it is true... it could be said that I am highly intelligent (MENSA level) and I wouldn’t deny that, and I’ve had an interesting, if not illustrious, career involvements that have had me in the right place at the right time.

 

Despite my disastrous luck in life, I’ve been an exceedingly lucky individual. My whole life is an ongoing exercise in polar opposite absurdity. I wouldn’t trade it for anything, really...

 

I’ve seen the after parties for MTV, hung out with actual celebrities and rock stars, and found myself in the company of some of the brightest and most talented minds in the world. For all of that, I find myself feeling honored to be there, and almost always surprised when I come to find that I’m usually the man of the hour. Celebrities and high-powered people acting like they are the ones who are honored to meet and get to hang out with me.

 

I’m still kinda weirded out by that...

 

 

 

 

Did I mention I’m not entirely a fan of Hollywood? They always came across as hollow and fake to me. No wonder David Bowie sang about it in his song Fame (for which the title of today’s post borrows a line). I’m not against celebrity and Hollywood... I just see past the smoke and mirrors and get right to the authentic people aspect of it. Which tends to either endear people or scare the living bejesus out of them. One of the many benefits of being an INTJ personality...

 

I see through the facade and they tend to relax a bit and stop putting up a front. That’s all Hollywood really is, just a bunch of smoke and mirrors. The ultimate of sustained persona versus sincerity.

 

All the while I play it cool and just try to stay down to Earth (and usually am). Approachable and an “everyday” sort of guy you could just hang out with. That’s how I see myself in my own mind. But my reputation precedes me in most cases and what I think of myself is rarely what others see in me when I enter the room.

 

This (in and of itself) is the crux of what being famous actually is. Meaning millions of people have the wrong idea about who you actually are, and no amount of contradiction can change their mind.

 

Of course, that internal image of myself goes to hell in a hand basket when I suddenly get a text message from an actual celebrity just to say “Hi” and to let me know they’re heading out for the next week and wanted to let me know.

 

I mean... at first I’m like “Hey, have a wonderful trip!” but then (about thirty seconds later) it really hits me.

 

I’m like: Wait a minute. Millions of adoring fans worldwide, television interviews, globetrotting, the whole nine yards... and you specifically think it is important to stop and let me (of all people) know that you’re heading out to Sweden for a week to visit family and you’ll be back soon?

 

I’m actually really speechless about that.

 

There is the understanding that this isn’t an isolated incident, either. I mean, somebody else (who I won’t disclose) took the time to let me know they were going to Hong Kong next month (visiting the wife’s family) and wanted to let me know ahead of time. Again, a really well known person worldwide... taking time out of their day to let me know they were going on vacation but would be back in a month.

 

As I sit here and think about it, I’m a bit flabbergasted. At what point in my life did that transition actually happen? But what blows my mind most is that while I’m sitting here thinking that I’m flattered and honored that they thought of me in all of this (enough to take the time out to let me know personally), I come to find out that they are fans of me.

 

All the while as I’m thinking they are the celebrity, they are thinking I’m the important celebrity to know.

 

That’s about the moment I realize (once again) that I actually am (sorta) a celebrity in my own right. Though I consistently try not to be, people treat me like I am and it never ceases to baffle me.

 

Sure, I can say that I’ve accomplished quite a lot in my life (so far). Been there and done that sort of mentality. I’m not entirely certain if the inner image of myself and celebrities has reached a point where I take it for granted or if I’m just in denial that I’m a celebrity as well.

 

Maybe it is a little bit of both?

 

When I spent a lot of time in Second Life, that persona had a chance to really take hold in the virtual sense. It did help that I had a PR department behind me, and that started the snowball rolling. I did interviews, photo shoots, a research paper, book chapter, and even spoke at virtual events.

 

My last “appearance” was as a panelist for the previous Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education conference, whereby it never ceased to amaze me what amazing people I was sharing a stage with.

 

 

 

 

But there I was, just as large as life (maybe larger).

 

One could say that I voluntarily made an exit from that scene in the virtual sense, but in reality it never stopped. All I managed to actually do was to lay low and go off the radar a bit for some peace and quiet. More or less I took the Johnny Depp route and moved to virtual France.

 

This can be evidenced by the continuation (even today) whereby a lot of SL folks are like “I’m a huge fan of you!” when I’m saying I’m a fan of them... But while I’ve scaled back the public appearances portion of my persona aspect, it only seemed to apply to the virtual world. In the real world that celebrity mentality continues unabated and completely to my surprise.

 

The actual reasoning for my absence in Second Life has been more along the lines of a recurring theme in virtual worlds users that I refer to as Groundhog Day Syndrome. Named after that wonderful Bill Murray movie, it is a perfect symbolism for just having total ennui and a loss of motivation/tolerance for something.

 

It comes and goes, so don’t think for a moment that I’m suddenly never going to be passionate about virtual worlds again. It’s just that after... I’d say about twenty years now, it all just gets repetitive and boring. You log in and see the same old things, that pattern recognition kicks in and you start to think “Why bother?”

 

Or maybe I’m a virtual God?

 

Of course, not the God. But, ya know... a god by the definition of Bill Murray in Groundhog Day? Maybe just a guy that’s been around so long he seems like he knows everything (but doesn’t)? Nothing is “new” and so everything (most things) are expected and seen coming a mile away.

 

I think maybe in the bigger scheme of things, a lot of us are gods in that manner.

 

And just like a “god”, when I get bored of something I want to make something better and create something amazing. Something totally new.

 

 

 

I could sit around and talk about the virtues of Oculus Rift and all the great things it’ll do for the industry, but to be honest it is merely an over-hyped stopgap between virtual reality and mixed reality.

 

The real evolution and future of virtual worlds, and ultimately the Metaverse as a whole is in mixed reality/augmented reality space. So much so that even Neal Stephenson himself was recently hired by Magic Leap. So it’s not really an uneducated opinion I’m putting out there, but pointing out that the godfather of the Metaverse itself and a huge name in Cyberpunk is involved not in virtual reality but in advanced Mixed Reality.

 

Of course, I already knew this was coming. Not that I’m tooting my own horn, but I have been saying for the past few years now that the future is in Augmented and Mixed Reality, and that Virtual Reality is just the Gartner Hype Cycle to get us there.

 

 

 

Right now, Virtual Reality is back at the Peak of Inflated Expectations, and by the time Oculus Rift leaves the gate officially, it’ll likely be overshadowed by things like Magic Leap and similar mixed reality systems, which will dropkick VR back into the Trough of Disillusionment. Or maybe not... seeing as Oculus recently bought out 13th Lab, which is a company that specializes in augmented reality and has their own SLAM algorithm for real world mapping.

 

I think Oculus sees the writing on the wall already and is looking to shift gears to a headset that can do AR/MR before they launch so they’ll potentially have an “all in one” sort of headset.

 

But still, that sort of mixed reality system is still very limited in the bigger scope. It is localized and effectively tethered to smaller spaces and publish model experiences. The same can be said (ahead of time) for Magic Leap technology, and although their display technology is actually really fuck-all impressive, they still only have one piece of the bigger puzzle for the future. They (like Oculus) are (to me) considered just enabler technology in the stop gap to the future.

 

Which (of course) brings us to that all important question:

 

What the hell have you been up to, Will?

 

Whereby the reply is going to be that I’ve been focusing on the technology forecast concerning advanced mixed reality systems and how to actually build one that would meet my stupidly high expectations. I started drifting out of the VR sector and into the MR sector awhile ago, but keeping in mind all of the stuff I’ve learned from VR in the past twenty years. Not surprisingly, it applies to the mixed reality sector quite well.

 

After all, I think I’ve said pretty much all there is to say about Virtual Reality and The Metaverse. Though I am still the Vice Chair for the IEEE Virtual World Standard Group (P1828) and likely for a rekindled standard initiative stemming from P1828 at IEEE, I want to think bigger than that.

 

My general philosophy has always been that if the whole damned world is looking at something and it’s collectively “the future”, then I’m not looking far enough ahead at the trends. So that’s pretty much why I transitioned my attention from VR to Mixed Reality systems.

 

 

 

 

In the bigger picture, there’s a guy formerly at the Nokia Mobile Life Centre who was (is) working on his PhD thesis and project (Kim Nevelsteen). An avid fan of The Metaverse overall for the past ten years, he always wanted to focus on Pervasive Games and Mixed Reality. As per his update, he moved on to just being at Stockholm University in the Immersive Networking group but has had the opportunity to change direction and focus on pervasive games and mixed reality like he originally wanted (finally!)

 

 

“Your paper was a pivotal point because it just made me burn (pun intended) even more for working on the Metaverse. It also puts in black and white lots of things I have been thinking about before.”

 

 

He and I have had wonderful conversations on and off about the state of the industry and where we think the future is at, and it’s nice to know that he is finally able to pursue that future.

 

In all honesty, it is flattering to know that I am able to inspire people in the industry like that, and have a positive effect. I wouldn’t say I was the only thing that drove him in that direction, but instead (as it apparently wasn’t clear before), I see myself as one of many pivotal parts of the whole conversation and part of that inspiration and culmination of many things.

 

In and of itself, I am still amazingly flattered and humbled that I could have even the slightest effect in the industry.

 

Editor’s Note: Part of the problem with writing a blog as a stream of consciousness with little (or no) editing is that a lot of the time I miss things that I think are implied when they come across as meaning something else. Happens sometimes when you’re writing far into the morning, and so I’d like to make that clear on behalf of Kim in what will probably one of the first edits to this blog. He’s an amazing guy and highly intelligent, definitely check out what he’s up to via the link above.

 

Other than that, I’ve been tied up with a NASA project called Deep Space Blue about the experience of being a near future Mars inhabitant and replicating some of that atmosphere for the real world participants. Hashtag #JourneyToMars if that’s your thing... Which in turn has landed me smack dab back where I was before with the whole “dealing with Hollywood and celebrities” thing.

 

Except a lot bigger than before.

 

As part of the Deep Space Blue initiative, there is a major Hollywood agency involved (the people who represent the celebrities and talent), as well as a big production company. And so, I’m back at the center of that maelstrom again as the intellectual celebrity bad-ass of the group.

 

Without even giving it a second thought, we send out best wishes and condolences to Melissa (Rivers) while congratulating Ben (Affleck) on getting the green light on his recent indie collaboration. This is the sort of normality I’ve come to take for granted in my life. I’m just not surprised by it any more...

 

I suppose I’m an intellectual celebrity versus famous for simply being good looking and an actor... though I’m sure a lot of ladies out there will correct me about the whole “being good looking” thing... I’ll take whatever I can get on that front. Flattery is always an acceptable currency.

 

It never ceases to amaze me just how many fan girls I actually have, or the various things they are prepared to do to and with me if only I’d give them a chance.

 

It’s enough to make me blush, and that says a lot.

 

 

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Cognitive Dissonance

Diagnosing Wonderland & The Future of Virtual Reality

 

 

The question was posed to me recently as part of the panel for Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education about what I feel the future of virtual worlds would be, and to define better what the next 18-24 months should focus on for companies like Linden Lab with Second Life. These are questions being bounced back and forth between the moderator and the panelists to sort things out prior to the panel this weekend.

 

My explanation for what I saw as the history and future of virtual worlds as a whole was a bit out of the ordinary in that I likened it to being a psychiatrist trying to diagnose Arkham Asylum. With the popular definition of insanity being “Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” it is a perfect explanation and analogy.

 

What I’ve seen over the past twenty years is a textbook case of cognitive dissonance and quite possibly insanity, and so (even humorously) I relate to the Arkham Asylum analogy in that the only real explanation for the situation today and in the past has been a combination of cognitive dissonance and self-imposed insanity.

 

Nearly every case in virtual worlds up until today (not surprisingly) has a doppelganger in the past. There are a few very distinct phases that the industry goes through with each iteration, which makes it dead simple to predict where it will go and for what reasons.

 

But despite knowing this, it is much harder to convey this information appropriately in order to break that cycle. It isn’t because the information is wrong, nor is it because that information does not have enough evidence to support it. What it boils down to is flat rejection of new information due to strongly held belief to core ideals.

 

In this manner, the inmates are running the asylum.

 

If I were to define those phases, it would look something like this:

 

• Phase One – Introduction of a new client based system.
• Phase Two – Introduction of the VR in Browser system.
• Phase Three – Introduction of HMD & Related Hardware.

 

Each distinct phase leads to the next upon the trial and error of the prior. For instance, in the early 1990s there was Worlds Inc and their methodology of client as virtual world. You would download the entire world up front before you could enter and each space was a predefined area. After that was ActiveWorlds which was actually a technology spawned by Worlds Inc but rejected in favor of their other in-house client. ActiveWorlds had a dynamically downloaded environment and user-generated space in-client with the tools built in as a sandbox.

 

This was about the time that VR in a Web Browser arose with standards such as VRML/X3D and plugins to view those worlds emerged. VR on the Web, had an offshoot as Blaxxun 3D (B3D Today) and Cybertown was one of the VRML multi-user environments on the web that utilized this.

 

Later in the 1990s, we saw the popularization of virtual reality really take off, and HMDs and hardware became more mainstream. Companies such as Vuzix (1997/98) and VFX had headsets back then, in combination with peripherals and devices which today are the genesis of modern peripherals and devices.

 

Gaming companies during the Phase Three timeline also began introducing their own peripherals. You are most likely aware of Nintendo’s Power Glove, which was a stripped down version of a VR Data Glove from VPL. Jaron Lanier was actually the guy that was called in to consult Nintendo on making it. Sega and Atari also were slated to make VR Headsets for their consoles at the time, but obviously failed in more ways than one.

 

Jaron was actually pretty popular back then as he also consulted on stuff like Minority Report, Johnny Pneumonic and Lawnmower Man. However, this is really the tip of the iceberg for what his man is responsible for in the industry. For a more in-depth biography – check here.

 

The point of this observation being that when somebody says Jaron Lanier almost definitely knows more than you about the past, present and future of virtual reality, only a fool would challenge that. So in a recent WIRED magazine article when he stated it was like a weird time-warp listening to Zuckerberg explain what he thought the future of Oculus VR was going to be, we are really in no position to try to go in there and correct the man.

 

After all, Jaron is also one of the founding editors of WIRED magazine itself. This guy is like one of the godfathers of virtual reality, with an academic and accomplishments list that may as well be untouchable.

 

Interestingly enough, that doesn’t seem to stop virtual worlds enthusiasts from thinking they are going to do just that – once again showing the irrational decision making aspect of cognitive dissonance, and the blind adherence to the idealized future of virtual reality and Second Life. Cognitive dissonance makes you do really stupid things.

 

Seeing other analysts in that article also echo the same sentiments isn’t surprising, and it’s not because they’re just trying to be Debbie Downers or just suck up to Jaron Lanier... it’s because they have a long history in the industry and remember when it last repeated.

 

 

What you have to remember is that people have been making the same pitch as Zuckerberg for a good thirty years, and it has never come to fruition.

 

I didn’t hear anything that Zuckerberg said that hasn’t been talked about before in the VR community for a very long time,” says Brian Blau, an analyst with research firm Gartner was part of hard-core virtual reality community in the ’80s and ’90s. “It has always been billed as a next-gen communication technology — something that can provide a more immersive and deeper connection to somebody else.”

 

The truth, as Blau points out, is that most VR technology creates a very solitary experience. It’s something you do alone, not with others.

 

Recent history has shown that if you try to make it more than that, it struggles to find an audience. Second Life — the virtual world that received such hype at the turn of the millennium before falling into obscurity — is the big cautionary tale. And that’s what Zuckerberg and Facebook are eying: A new Second Life. They even talk of selling virtual goods in this world, painting this as a potentially significant source of revenue for the company.

 

 

If you think it’s just WIRED, Jaron Lanier, and an analyst from Gartner making these assertions, you’d also be wrong. Even UbiSoft and gaming companies are luke-warm to the virtual reality hype.

 

 

Might we one day see a new Assassin's Creed or Far Cry game that uses virtual reality technology? According to Ubisoft Vice President of Creative Lionel Raynaud, it's possible, but technology like Oculus Rift or Sony's just-announced Project Morpheus need to put up big numbers first.

 

"VR would need to sell at least 1 million units to be viable for development," Raynaud said tonight in San Francisco during a roundtable interview attended by GameSpot.

 

 

Of course, that was amended shortly afterward because making a statement like that in public would cause a shit-storm in PR to HMD makers who desperately need the big support. Having people not drinking the kool-aid and saying how great it is will hinder their adoption, and so everyone needs to get on board. But you get the real thinking in the first quote before they got that call from Sony ripping UbiSoft’s president a new one, who in turn had a pleasant talk with Lionel the next morning.

 

But it doesn’t stop there... even Business Insider is making similar calls about virtual reality, albeit a little less direct. Just saying that Facebook buying Oculus was just a throw-away at worst because it doesn’t matter if it fails.

 

 

 

 

Well, it matters to me and probably you if Oculus tanks because the wide reaching implication is that the industry falls back into obscurity and relegated as a fad once again, as we rinse and repeat back to Phase One. But that’s pretty much what is awaiting Oculus VR going forward...

 

This time it’s actually a little easier to see that coming, because Phase One is already tipping it’s hand prematurely in the form of hifidelity from Philip Rosedale. There’s your next Phase One “VR as Client” kickoff.

 

It’s starting to blur together at this point, as the industry is just throwing everything together in a pot and hoping something makes a recipe.

 

So the take-away here is that when Phase Three runs its course, it is usually about this time that we cycle to Phase One again, to repeat the history.

 

Looking at this logically, we can see the correlations quite clearly and unmistakably. It’s a matter of historical comprehension and not speculation, which is what analysts are citing when they are making their assertions about the current situation.

 

When we find historical doppelgangers to modern day industry, we can therefore trace the historical context and outcome to the modern attempts as well. Looking into the future involves looking into our past, so long as that present and future insists on borrowing from it heavily.

 

Take into consideration Avatar Reality/Blue Mars. An updated carbon copy of Worlds Inc as a model and software. It followed the same premise and operation, and therefore was subject to the same outcome. When this was explained to them, there was cognitive dissonance as described above – and so it was impossible to avoid that outcome.

 

Both models existed based on downloading pre-made worlds prior to entry, and as a matter of course, both existed on the premise of content creation fees for creating and storing those worlds.

 

 

 

 

But what of ActiveWorlds and Second Life as doppelgangers?

 

They both exist as dynamic user-generated virtual worlds, they both thrived on a simulator business model, both had a hard time justifying their Premium accounts, both offered personal houses/spaces as a benefit, both famously spent much of their time saying that updating their software was impossible or not feasible, and both suffered from not investing in that re-write to update their systems properly.

 

Both ActiveWorlds and SecondLife surround themselves with favorable opinions, pass the buck or make decisions not based on feasibility but on unwillingness to do so. Both are notorious for implementing things only after users find a way to hack the functionality into their viewer or repurpose existing methods for new methods, and both are notorious for dragging their feet or trying to bury dissenting opinions while rewarding only favorable opinions (cognitive dissonance).

 

I could go on all day about the similarities of practice and outcome between the two, and even the community itself shadowing the past, and how ActiveWorlds is the doppelganger of SecondLife, but the only thing that ultimately matters is that the outcome is the same if you are mimicking a past iteration.

 

So if we want to know what will happen to Second Life and ultimately Linden Lab, we merely have to ask what happened to ActiveWorlds as a result of this sequence of events.

 

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When the Phase Three of the 1990s failed, it recycled back around to Phase One again, and so we saw another round of VR as Client initiatives which again borrowed heavily from the prior generation. There.com, Second Life, etc all found their roots historically and had no problem copying it with a little more polish this time. But each one of those iterations succumbed to the same outcomes as the generation they were mimicking.

 

Again, we’re talking about blatant examples of cognitive dissonance and popularized definition of insanity.

 

So, too, it wasn’t a surprise to see Phase Two arise again a few years ago with the re-popularization of VR in a Web Browser, since the introduction of WebGL standards. But again, if you’re going to follow the historical route, you are already doomed to conclude the same way. It was no different than the rise and irrelevance of VRML/X3D and the companies that had a vested interest in VR on the Web in the 1990s versus the rise of WebGL and VR on the Web again a few years back.

 

In this generation, the version of Worlds Inc methodologies were mimicked with BlueMars, and the methodologies of ActiveWorlds have been mimicked by Linden Lab with Second Life.

 

It is actually eerily uncanny how this is repeating itself. Even the discontent with Second Life leading to reverse engineering it to make independent versions under OpenSim mimics what happened in ActiveWorlds with third parties rushing to make their own virtual world system altogether or via purchasing a white label version of ActiveWorlds license and them differentiating themselves as their own independent universe/galaxy.

 

The latter isn’t surprising to me in the least because a certain Adam Frisby (SineWave), who you might recall is one of the people responsible for OpenSim was also known as Gwala in ActiveWorlds at the same time as that independent universe/3rd party offering rush came to pass. So when the same discontent happened in Second Life, or maybe that virtual worlds frustration carried over from ActiveWorlds, it’s no surprise that Adam was on the forefront of OpenSim in the beginnings.

 

This is why knowing your virtual world history means so much.

 

 

“I really can’t believe nobody else sees this happening.”

 

The take-away from all of this is the answer to the original question posed at the beginning. What do I think the future of virtual worlds will be, and what can be done in the next 18-24 months to put a company like Linden Lab on the right course?

 

Well, the answer to that question is a quantum answer. It exists as a failure and success simultaneously depending on what choices are made going forward. It’s not something that can be reduced to a sound bite or explained in a few minutes, because the answer to that question is a monumental amount of reorganization, education, and execution across the board – not to mention it is entirely at the mercy of people who experience insanity and cognitive dissonance to enact, which is a nice way of saying it more than likely will be ignored or completely half-assed if considered.

 

But here’s some initial thoughts on what to focus on in the next 18-24 months, and by no means is it all-inclusive. That’s what having an advisory board is supposed to do for you over the course of long-term engagement versus trying to sum it up in a power point in ten minutes.

 

Because let’s be honest... if anyone could have fixed the virtual world industry in ten minutes, they would have by now. And if anyone could have fixed Linden Lab in ten minutes the CEO roster wouldn’t look like a revolving door, nor the company a graveyard of half-assed ideas, unfinished work and mid-life crisis.

 

So let’s start simply:

 

If the industry continues mimicking the past, it is doomed to repeat it. That means if we’re unable to truly re-imagine and evolve virtual reality into something new and exciting, something relevant to the real world on a broader scale, it is going to be relegated to repeating the same mistakes and we’ll have the same outcomes.

 

So the first order of business is to actually learn the history of virtual worlds/pop culture, and much of those outcomes, in order to avoid the same mistakes.

 

I’ve provided a link to a comprehensive paper on this exact subject that covers the entirety in detail. Subsequently, it’s my own paper from Association for Computing Machinery published last summer. I’m just nice enough not to make you pay for it. That being said, I can’t read and understand it for you on your behalf...

 

The second order of business is to get your own business in order. Figure out what actually is a Premium benefit and what you were bullshitting about (read: poaching the community). If you’re ripping off the community with it, you need to stop that and learn what the term “Added value” actually means.

 

The third order of business would be to resolve the company identity crisis. Realize that Second Life is a virtual environment platform in which all manner of things can be created for countless use-cases. Then realize that you’re not a video game company. Also learn the difference between virtual environment and video game.

 

If the platform itself were made more robust to cater to that content creation, Linden Lab wouldn’t need to make games independently as stand-alone products or purchase a content distribution platform. They already had both in Second Life if they chose to support it.

 

Instead of chasing their tails and playing “me too”, had they understood that Second Life is a universal platform that empowers creation in countless use case scenarios – they would have realized a few years ago that it would also be an excellent platform to empower an Augmented Reality future where Virtual Reality merges with Reality.

 

Some kid in Japan got bored and made this in his spare time. It makes what Linden Lab and the rest of the industry has been up to and trumping as the next big thing look like a monumental joke.

 

As an aside... I know how this is actually done in real time, and I also know how to build a better version of it that makes this one look like a toy. But it’s a sound concept nonetheless considering that there really is nothing else like it – unless you want to count Meta Spaceglasses... which are like... half as capable as this video demonstration.

 

 

 

 

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The most obvious evolution of virtual reality in the future looks nothing like the past but redefines the future.

 

When you no longer can find a doppelganger in the past for what you’re doing today, you are now making your own future instead of reliving history.

 

That’s my answer for the future of virtual worlds.

 

Repeat History or Make History.

 

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Synapse

To the outsider, the Singularity looks like madness | #SecondLife

 

In a recent Newsweek cover story, it is asserted that technology in general and (more precisely) access to the Internet and mass communication is somehow driving us insane.

 

 

Tweets, texts, emails, posts. New research says the Internet can make us lonely and depressed—and may even create more extreme forms of mental illness.

 

 

Let’s start the ball rolling by stating this is absolute hogwash. What we are seeing are the effects of an accelerated mind adapting to ubiquitous presence and access.

 

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I know, the kids these days with their iPhones, MP3 players, and computers. Tablets and other electronic cocaine addictions up the wazoo only compound the issue, right? I’m not so certain about that assertion.

 

What I’ve noticed is that these studies clearly take the situation out of context and make half-witted assertions about what they feel is going on with the participants. Yes, they are more apt to multitask and become irritable when disconnected from the Internet. Of course their attention span is lower and not able to concentrate on a single thing… or maybe they really can focus on a single thing but only if they truly are interested in it?

 

That’s something I’ve noticed more than anything.

 

In a world of endless information at our fingertips, we’re mentally adapting to the situation by becoming exceedingly quick at deciding what is important and what isn’t. So when we’re talking to our teenagers and they’re staring at their smart phones in a text messaging conversation, maybe they are deciding in a moment that what you are saying is really not as important as you are making it out to be? More to the point is that in an overwhelming onslaught of ubiquitous information and interaction, it’s not so much what you are saying but how you are choosing to convey that information that counts? Generally speaking, we’re simply not choosing the most efficient manner to convey information, nor is that information worth the sustained attention of the person you are trying to convey it to.

 

I wouldn’t say this is an unhealthy addiction. If anything, this is promising because what I see from my end is a population quickly adapting to the singularity context. Accelerating returns essentially mandates that progress will quicken, information will continue to expand and time will compress. In short, it’ll take less time to do more when compared to the same task in a prior generation.

 

So our population is adapting to this time compression. On the surface, I suppose it looks like a sort of mental illness or addiction. We’re already in a multiplicity of persona through or digital interactions, and we refer to ourselves in many differing contexts. A generation ago that notion would have immediately been characterized as a mental instability, but by today’s standards we are expected to engage the world as a multiplicity.

 

However, that isn’t to say that everyone is actually capable of this transition.

 

There are the digital natives and the digital immigrants, the prior are the younger generation that were born into the digital context and had access to these devices and technologies from birth, while the latter generation is not so lucky to have been a native and must retrain their minds to adapt to the technology and implications it brings.

 

Digital natives are most likely to handle this singularity transition without much of an issue, while the ones who will see the adverse effects are likely the digital immigrants who aren’t mentally prepared for this accelerated time shifting and ubiquity.

 

From a medical standpoint, we term this issue Reactive Psychosis, which essentially boils down to a sudden and overwhelming shift in engagement from relative quiet to an onslaught of information overload. To put it more precisely, we’re back to the notion of the monkey sphere (or Dunbar’s Number if you will) and how the mind is adapting to handle the inner-sphere and the outer-sphere. In the case of digital natives, they are already adapting to handle both inner and outer-sphere through highly adaptive prioritization of importance. To a digital immigrant, however, they have a predisposition to believe that all interactions hold relatively the same attention weight in order to remain courteous, and that mentality is the precursory to a mental breakdown when all things seemingly require full attention to be polite but the sheer number of interactions is overwhelming.

 

When we look at this more in-depth, I suppose we can assert that the recent generation has a much higher affliction of A.D.D. and A.D.H.D. but I’m wary to say that is really a bad thing. I’m sure in an analog context, those things are bad, but instead of diagnosing the individual with an attention problem, maybe we should be diagnosing our means of information stream myopic instead?

 

I’d like to hypothesize that those with attention deficit disorder really have nothing wrong with them at all, but instead they are adapted to handle a hyper-contextual environment which the standard methodologies today aren’t capable of delivering. A single mode of communication and, more importantly, a single thread of interaction is not appropriate in a ubiquitous environment. These digital natives are adapting to handle many things at once and actually perform better when able to interact with many things in shorter bursts.

 

In an education aspect, and I know many reading this are keen to perk up their ears, this means that the textbook approach to learning is dying a quick death. What education needs is a multi-sensory and immersive context in order for our digital natives to focus. Not only that, but there needs to be an open-ended context in which exploration of that immersion and many paths can lead to not just a predetermined outcome but the possibility of different outcomes.

 

If you’re an educator and into virtual worlds, then this is a perfect justification for integrating virtual environments into your classroom context. That doesn’t mean a linear environment that walks students through a lesson plan is appropriate, however. What it means is that the students literally thrive and focus on multi-faceted immersive contexts.

 

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Now, I know Rupert Murdoch isn’t exactly the most trustworthy person to quote concerning all of this, but if you put aside the unsavory actions what you have is at least a man who understood this situation from his own perspective and what would need to be done in order to move forward.

 

I’m not one to agree with Rupert Murdoch, but on this he is absolutely correct.

 

So far our solution has been to diagnose our kids with a disorder and pump them full of drugs to slow them down. I find this disturbing and amusing simultaneously because we’re approaching the situation in the same manner as the scientists in the game Portal where GladOS was becoming too smart and too fast, so the solution was to attach other cores to her in order to add noise and slow her down.

 

It’s disturbing because we’re addressing a symptom and not the problem, and amusing because instead of evolving our own methodologies, the digital immigrants immediately see this behavioral change as bad because it is very different than their own, and so they have to “solve” it by diagnosing it as a problem and prescribing drugs to handle it.

 

The problem isn’t the kids, and the problem isn’t technology. The problem is now that the digital natives aren’t being spoon fed information and context in a trickle that is an analog or singular context scenario, they simply aren’t tolerant of the old methodologies any longer. Yet our classrooms and digital immigrant society is still rooted in analog methodologies and contexts, so they decide that something is wrong with the new generation for not acting like they did at their age.

 

The problem is the methodologies and approach to interaction and learning. It’s no longer a world of single stream context, but instead we’re in a world of ubiquitous and hyper-threading context. Short bursts and high impact.

 

I suspect this is also the reason why my own blog is considered “hard to parse” or read for the average person. We’re used to a single graphic and a burst of text, 30 seconds of context and then we move on. However when we’re faced with long reads and deeper context, many people refer to the Cliff Notes version.

 

That being said, I’m still a digital native myself. I can get on with a smart phone and short burst conversations, but sometimes there are things which need to be given due diligence and time in a discussion. I think when we begin to cultivate a balance between the two, we’ll get along just fine. For those that are full-tilt digital natives; These are the people who are the future. Don’t treat it as a disorder or negative addiction. We’re addicted to information and the world. We’re soaking up all things of interest at a hyper-active pace. We’re retraining our minds to learn like we did when we were children…

 

Think about it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3D Virtual Worlds and the Metaverse:

Current Status and Future Possibilities | #SecondLife

 

On December 1st, 2011 there arrived in my email quite astounding news from Dr. Dionisio and Dr. Gilbert that the Association for Computing Machinery had not only accepted our research paper 3D Virtual Worlds and the Metaverse: Current Status and Future Possibilities for publication in their next  journal, but that the reviewers had given the best praise of the paper that the editors had ever seen. As I read through the critiques from each reviewer, I was humbled by their responses.

 

As Dr. Gilbert succinctly put it:

 

After my recent return from the European Summit of the Immersive Education Initiative (I'm still jet lagged as you can see from the early hour I'm writing this!), Dondi sent me the news that ACM Computing Surveys had accepted our paper with relatively minor revisions.  Even more significantly, the impressions of the editors and individual reviewers of the paper were outstanding with all the reviewers suggesting that the work be considered for a best paper award, the main reviewer viewing the work as a  "seminal" contribution to the field, and the Associate Editor calling the first round reviews the best he's ever seen! 

 

What I've also learned is that ACM Computing Surveys is one of the most cited and respected journals in the field of computer science (I had no idea that Dondi had decided to reach so high in submitting the paper). To get accepted into this journal, especially with such high praise, is a great honor and once the article is published our work will be widely read and could have a real impact on the field.  After we submit the revisions in the next few weeks you can crank up all your social media expertise and begin to distribute the article as "in press." 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s definitely an honor, and quite humbling to receive that caliber of review from not one but four independent sources across the industry. My understanding of the process was that we should have expected multiple rounds of revisions before being considered for publication, so having it accepted immediately after the first round of peer review is astounding.

 

In the words of the Associate Editor at ACM:

 

These actually are the most positive first-round reviews of a journal article I have seen. If you revise this and include a document that explains how you did, and did not, address comments, I will not need to send this out for further review if it looks satisfactory to me.

 

Let’s put aside the banner waving for a moment, because despite how groundbreaking this all is, it is only a prelude to a bigger picture concerning the Metaverse as I usually provide in articles like this.

 

The Down Low

 

There is a lot of subject matter covered in the paper for ACM Journal, but the title says it all: Current Status and Future Possibilities.

 

Essentially, what we wrote was a comprehensive survey paper looking into the various areas of virtual environments, or immersive environments as some refer to it, and addressed the fundamental challenges and technologies that can further the progress. There is also discussion in the paper concerning what areas are deficient and in need of further research initiative in hopes that those areas will be focused on by some of the countless people reading and citing the paper.

 

Literary influences that led up to the current state of affairs are also outlined, in order to give a proper history of the subject while framing the further understandings as the paper continued on. As one reviewer put it, we presented the most comprehensive paper on the subject that we could short of writing an entire book about the subject.

 

As the message from Dr. Gilbert suggests, I will be making the entire paper available as a PDF when it is sent off to ACM for publication. While there are a lot of topics covered in the paper,  I’ll only be addressing one of them here in this blog.

 

The Take-Away

 

One of the biggest things that can be taken from the paper concerning the future direction of the Metaverse (in my opinion) is the implicit understanding that centralized networking is our Achilles Heel. It always has been, even before we really got into the hardcore 3D Immersive Environments like we see today. All the way back to Lessons from Habitat in 1991, Bandwidth being a scarce resource has always been a concern in something like this, and centralized networking was pegged as a culprit.

 

Yes, we can alleviate that stress by offloading across a datacenter, or buying more powerful servers. But the limitation is still there, and all we end up doing in the process is kicking the can down the road instead of actually trying to solve the problem at the root.

 

Whatever the future holds for immersive environments, it is likely that decentralized networking will be a major part of it in stark contrast to our massive datacenters today and centralized bandwidth.

 

To Boldly Go…

 

There is also a hint toward the data itself, in that the distribution of that data would likely not be the same as how we are accomplishing this task today. I’d like to say that in order for a powerful Metaverse to really evolve, the data has to be agnostic. The best way to understand this is to imagine the replicators in Star Trek and how they work.

 

When the captain walks up to a replicator and says “Tea. Earl Gray. Hot.” the replicator isn’t looking for a cup of tea in its inventory. Nowhere on the ship is there a room with thousands of cups of hot tea on a shelf waiting to be beamed to the replicator. Essentially, there is a holding tank of sorts on the ship which contains the raw molecular “soup” of materials, and the replicators are simply using a digital recipe to pull the components and “replicate” that molecular recipe.

 

 

A replicator works almost like magic. Just like the plot to every Star Trek series.

 

 

If we apply this understanding to purely digital files, the same process works. Let’s say that the replicator is a software program on your computer whose sole purpose is to reconstruct digital files based on digital fingerprints (keys) that you give it. Since we’re already talking about a decentralized network as our future, the “holding tank” full of agnostic data to be used for those reconstructions of files should be spread across every user of the network.

 

Why not? We all have a cache folder sitting on our computers from virtual environments and web browsers. What if that cache folder was simply agnostic data and available to the entire network of users in a P2P manner?

 

First off, it would mean that our cache’s are meaningless to human interpretation. Completely random data not representing anything in particular until we give it the fingerprint to reconstruct the file we need. Secondly, it would mean that the data becomes multi-use data.

 

That last point is very important. It means that 1GB of multi-use data represents or contains any file that is 1GB or less. We can say that Photoshop CS5 is under 1GB for the installer, correct? So that multi-use data would contain Photoshop CS5, and anything else that is 1GB or under. The key, so to speak, is that while such a system just about invalidates the premise of current copyright law, making it impossible to prosecute somebody using such a system, it brings up something even more interesting.

 

11 Herbs and Spices

 

It’s not the data that is really copyrightable, but the means by which such data can be arranged in a unique configuration as a representation of a work. What is really copyrightable happens to be the unique fingerprints which tell the system how to reconfigure multi-use data for a specific file output that is no longer multi-use, or in layman terms – it’s the digital recipe.

 

Another interesting side effect to multi-use data is that you’re not storing a 1:1 representation of anything. Since the data is multi-use, that means (for the most part) that you don’t need the storage equivalent for a copy of every single file in the system. All you really need at the very least is enough agnostic data available in order to cover the largest file on the network.

 

If the largest file you have on the network is about 50GB (and I’m being very generous here), then on a multi-use data system, you would need no more than 50GB of data total for everything you ever store into that network. That’s the bare minimum. Yes, at that level it would take longer to reconstruct the data, but it would still work. the more agnostic data you have in storage, the faster that reconstruction goes. Think of it like over unity…

 

Needless to say that a multi-use data structure in combination with decentralized networking would mean that, in example, the entirety of the Second Life asset servers could be housed in about 100 terabytes or less (for redundancy), and the reliability of that system would mean that the odds of anything in your inventory ever disappearing would be so close to nil as to make no odds.

 

And that, is how you solve the root of a problem instead of addressing only the symptoms.

 

 

 

Down With The Sickness

We live in a very sick world. Here’s how we fix it for real. #Zeitgeist #OWS

 

Usually I’m the sort of person who writes exceedingly lengthy articles about complex ideals or viewpoints, much of which I am fully aware the average person (aside from the most technically devout) essentially tune out in an age of Attention Deficit Media.

 

 

 

 

However, this post concerns something entirely different, and is my official position concerning Occupy Wall Street and the worldwide protests in solidarity. It includes a full video lecture that is likely one of the most important that you could ever watch on the subject, and I highly recommend, just this once, that you put aside your attention deficit and take the time to digest the information that will be presented in this post.

 

I’m an avid supporter of Occupy Wall Street but for entirely different reasons than the #OWS crowd are supporting it for. While the people are protesting inequality, corruption and greed, they are still at a phase of understanding where they believe working within a system that is inherently corrupt will bring them a solution.

 

There is literally no way to pay the mounting debts of this nation, or the world. Period. End of story. Every bank note in your hand is a representation of debt, with interest that can never be repaid. It is the representation for everything that is absolutely wrong in this world today.

 

Take a good look at it.

 

We cannot fix a system inherently designed by nature to deprive a majority of people on this planet in order to provide an excess for a few. A system designed for cyclical consumption and consumerism, infinite growth, in a world of very finite resource. It is a logical impossibility.

 

Nobody, not you nor I, will ever be able to vote these facts out of existence. There are no laws that we can possibly write and enact that will change these immutable laws of nature, or of the nature of this parasite we call money.

 

I support Occupy Wall Street because they are a catalyst to realization, if not still premature. They know something is terribly wrong with the world and this country, and have a vague idea what the root of that problem is. However the solutions they propose at this time are nothing more than addressing the symptoms of the problem, and are doomed to failure on the whole.

 

I still support them, because they are a much needed catalyst, and I am patient enough to wait for those protesters to truly have a revelation as to what the root of the problem is and how we can truly fix it. They, and you, will inevitably realize this immutable fact sooner or later.

 

If you realize this immutable fact later, you will likely be fighting for water, food and basic resources. Wars, famine and disease running rampant in what used to be a 1st World Country.

 

The choice is ours.

 

You can take an hour and forty-five minutes of your day to change your mind and help change the world through education, or you can spend that time looking for pictures of cats on the internet.

 

Weigh it out for yourself. Life is short, use it wisely.

 

 

 

Social Pathology – Full Lecture | The Zeitgeist Movement

 

Moving Forward

It’s time to dream bigger, because we’re all in this together.

 

We are one people, on one planet. This tiny speck of dirt we call Earth is of finite resources, yet we act as though it will never end. We are divided, and pitted against each other at every single level of the social and economic ladder. We fight for resources, we fight each other, and those who fight the most and break all of the rules set into place in order to level a playing field for all of us are obviously the winners.

 

Yet the price we pay is global. No person will escape the costs of this broken global society.

 

 

 

 

When we have nothing left. When all the things we take for granted today as having worth simply collapse and leave us with nothing. That is when we will begin to understand the things which truly matter as a society.

 

A global society.

 

Until that time, we will likely remain in denial… because change is too hard to accept when we have no incentive to do so. But there will come a time soon, when all of those superficial worths will be stripped from you and I, and we will have no choice but to accept change, or die. There will be no other choice, no more excuses or tomorrows.

 

That time is coming quickly, and we’ve already far surpassed the point of no-return. If you believe that multi-trillion dollar debts that continue to accumulate based on money that has no meaning, let alone do not exist until called into existence as further debt and interest are somehow repayable, then you fail to understand the magnitude of the situation we lay under today.

 

This is no longer about countries, and this is far past the point of redemption or bailouts. While Wall Street, Banks and Corporations received bailout money in the hundreds of billions of dollars, they alone are posting record profits while unemployment remains stagnant at a total of zero… zero jobs created.

 

Nothing has changed from 2008… but soon it will, and we will have no choice but to change with it.

 

It’s time to think like a global species for the benefit of everything and everyone that calls this magnificent planet home. It’s the only way to move forward.

 

We cannot live without this planet, but this planet can surely live without us. It’s time we take responsibility and step up to the plate as a global entity, united as one, for the betterment of all.

 

 

 

Zeitgeist: Moving Forward | 2011 Release

 

 

 

Download the DVD Torrent here: http://zeitgeistmovie.com/torrents.html

Divide By Zero

This blog will now implode.

 

Mathematically it is said that dividing by zero is a logical impossibility. When you try to do the calculation on a calculator, it usually gives you an error or NaN (Not a Number) which is a result of the IEEE floating point standard. Furthermore, in the unlikely event you decide to divide by zero on paper or manually, you always end up with logical impossibility such as the idea that 1 = 0 or that any number can logically equal any other number.

 

In classical mathematics this isn’t possible. If we say that 1 equals 0 then what meaning does any number actually have if they are all equal to each other? Clearly two of something cannot equal one of something. However, I’d like to attempt a thought experiment.

 

In classical mathematics we say that 1 does not equal 2 because we treat them as unconnected entities with no common underlying basis. Let us demonstrate with two apples -

 

O O

 

O

 

So we have two apples and then underneath we have one apple (represented by the crude use of a capital O)

 

So how does one apple O equal two apples O O or vice versa?

 

I like to think of this in terms of quantum proofs instead of classical proofs. Just as in classical physics, things work very differently than on the quantum level where the same rules do not apply, we see a bit of clarity in a division by zero in this case when looked at through classical mathematics versus what I will call hyper-mathematics.

 

The underlying issue with zero is that in a function like [ y = 1/x ] as x approaches 0, y approaches negative infinity. This is a problem in and of itself because we really don’t like to think about the nature of infinity either. So in my mind, I believe the understanding comes specifically from the special set of numbers such as defining +∞ and –∞ respectively and also the duality of the opposing nature of +0 and –0

 

Is there such thing as a positive zero and a negative zero? Well, I suppose it would depend on whether we’re talking about the nature of zero to begin with. Zero is a representation of ∞ nothing or in this case –∞ , so I’d say that 0 whether it is +0 or –0 is inconsequential because it’s still 0 and 0 is interchangeable with -∞, while ∞ is an infinite positive of something. I suppose then we are talking about probabilities of something or nothing in infinite amounts and that the probability is actually both something and nothing at the same time, and thus leads us to declarations of 1 = 2, but moreover that anything is actually anything else and nothing at all in ∞ abundance.

 

The only thing I know about that exists and doesn’t simultaneously is in the realm of quantum physics where we have decoherence or the collapsing of dual wave into a single upon conscious observation. In this manner we say there are quantum computers where normal 1 and 0 become both simultaneous in a qubit configuration. Here is an inkling of something equaling something else at the same time in a manner that says it is both, and the determining factor is simply conscious observation. I’d say, then, that it’s not entirely impossible for 1 = 2 in the same manner that in a qubit 1 = 0 in a quantum state.

 

 

 

 

But what does this really mean in the end?

 

For practicality reasons, just like we use classical physics (Newtonian and Einstein) for the large stuff, when we get down to the building blocks themselves, that no longer applies and we switch to quantum physics where 1 = 0 in some sort of dual existence. I’d say that classical mathematics is for counting apples, while hyper-math is for counting infinities and probabilities within each construct.

 

But, you may say that infinity is simply that… there cannot be more than one infinity, can there? Again, I suppose this depends entirely on our understanding of infinity and reality itself. For instance, we can say that reality is infinite because it extends forever, but then we’re talking about a dimensional plane of existence which is infinite but only a level, wherein other levels are separate infinities and may not intersect our own layer of reality which is itself an infinite plane. So we get an idea of having multiple infinities in the greater construct of reality, which in itself comprises infinity when taken together.

 

I suppose then that ∞ + ∞ = ∞(2) which can still be represented as merely ∞

 

The devil is in the context.

 

If we wanted to demonstrate the notion of multiple ∞ we simple grab four mirrors. Face two mirrors toward each other and do the same with the other two side by side with the first set. What we have, then is a demonstration of ∞(2) where two spaces are separately infinite. This is a basic demonstration just to get the gist of the concept.

 

Let’s take this a step further and look at holography.

 

A holographic plate contains a three dimensional information construct of the item that was effectively imaged, but if we cut the holographic plate in half, we do not have half of the image, but two complete sets of the information, and no matter how much we divide the holographic plate we will always end up with a complete informational scene, as if holography captures the information in an ∞ state and no matter how much we divide ∞(x) we end up with many infinities all intact. In effect, we aren’t dividing the information, but only our available viewport of that information. This is a lot like understanding the difference between ∞ and ∞(x) in context.

 

Information about any given point in the scene is recorded across the entire medium, rather than one fixed area as in a photograph. Cutting a hologram in half results in two complete representations of the original scene, each merely having a more limited viewport. Think of viewing a street outside your house through a 4ft x 4ft window, and then through a 2ft x 2ft window; You can see nearly all the same things through the 2ft window, but you can see more at once through the 4ft window.

 

This is where the application of dividing by zero and the many natures of ∞ make sense.

 

Zero, in this case is the complimentary opposite of an infinite. Where ∞ is taken as a positive something in infinite capacity while zero is an infinite nothing in capacity.

 

When we say that 1=X where X is every possible number to ∞ and even infinite nothing (zero) we can represent this with holography where the plate can be divided ∞ and still retain the information of the whole in each division. But I suspect this goes deeper because then we start to ask what happens when we divide all the way down to atomic, subatomic, or quantum level?

 

I suspect then that we begin to understand the nature of ∞ and zero a lot better than we do right now, and the overall implications for what we call an understanding of reality and multiple realities.

 

It would mean, then, that the very stuff everything is made of contains an infinite amount of information. It is a probabilistic infinity, and that brings us back to 1=2. Everything equals everything else and is based on fundamental configurations to attain a specific probability at a higher level, but even at a higher level all things contain the infinite information to comprise infinite anything else including itself. While we can divide the apple infinitely, and we get fractional apples in classical mathematics, in hyper-math we end up with multiple infinite instances of informational constructs, just like the holographic plate – and the slices of said apple represent the limited viewport effect of the whole.

 

In the end, the question remains: Is it mathematically possible to divide by zero in a logical manner? The answer, I suspect, depends entirely on whether you want to deal with the nature of reality and subdivisions of infinity in the process. For all practical applications, the answer is no for the same reasons we don’t teach quantum mechanics to our middle school children. However, for a more inclusive answer, we can say that yes it’s not only possible but gives us an incredibly deeper understanding of everything by doing so.

 

After all, wouldn’t the division of ∞ into ∞(x) really mean the same thing as dividing a holographic plate? In both instances, we end up with all the information and just a smaller viewport to each individually. I think that sums up our understanding of reality at the moment. We see a smaller viewport of the full ∞ represented as ∞(1) or if we take a multiverse theory into account ∞(x) where our viewport on reality is simply narrowed. Our notion of “real” numbers are actually the abstract concept in the grand scheme of things, because numbers represent fractional viewports of the infinite information as a whole.

 

Do we need to calculate that on our calculators? Probably not, because we’re dealing with abstract concepts that fly in the face of traditional mathematics. Will dividing by zero create some sort of rip in reality?

 

I don’t think so… this blog is still here, and so are you. I’d say then it’s pretty safe.

 

But don’t attempt it on a calculator… because it will likely break its tiny mind.