Call me cynical, but it looks like I’m not alone in remaining unconvinced about the short-to-medium term future of non-game virtual worlds. As Clay Shirky writes:
If someone is shown a virtual hamburger, it can arouse real hunger. However, to satisfy this hunger, he must then walk away from the image and get his hands on a real hamburger. This is not the case, to put the matter delicately, with erotic imagery; a attractive but illusory avatar can arouse desire, but that desire can then be satiated without recourse to the real … I suspect that the cases where 3D immersion works are, and will continue to be, those uses that most invite the mind to fill in or simply do without missing detail, whether because of a triggering of sexual desire, the fight or flight reflex (many games), avarice (gambling), or other areas where we are willing and even eager to make rapid inferences based on a paucity of data.
The Hamburger / Erotica comparison reminds me of the story wherein Diogenes is asked “how to avoid the temptation to lust of the flesh, and begins masturbating. When rebuked for doing so, he replies, ‘If only I could soothe my hunger by rubbing my belly.’” Which, speaking of hunger, just makes me all the more convinced that real-world metadata beats fake-world real data just about every time. In conclusion, (real) burritos are awesome, and I do believe that “without recourse to the real” is my new favorite euphemism for masturbation.
1 Response to “On the Internet, Nobody Knows I Wanna Be Your Dog”