IDORU: FutureOfTheWeb?
Out of context: Reply #4
- Started
- Last post
- 16 Responses
- CAJTBr0
it's not really the 'future of the web'. for the last hundred or so years, the major prevailing trend within technology has been to allow people to be in other places quicker/more easily. eg: radio allowed the voice of a broadcaster to appear in homes miles from where the person actually was; the telephone allowed two people hundreds of miles apart to communicate as if they were in the same place; the internet allows people to publish information worldwide, removing the costs and practicalities of physical media; (you can even argue that transportation is another part of this trend to allow people to 'be there' with less difficulty).
it's just an extension of that, not a specific extension of the web or anything to do with sub-cultures.
as dangerboy pointed out, when you actually use this you see that it has major flaws. in order to do this, you'd have to check out of real life and immerse yourself in something essentially false. you could say that talking to people on the internet/spending your life watching films is something of a false reality, but at least these allow you the opportunity to participate simultaneously in the real world. if the technology were there to simulate these things as if they truly were reality, no doubt some people would move into them full time, but for the next 20 or so years, until they do get the technology, who wants to waste their time in what is essentially a slower, less sensual version of every day life?
i enjoyed the book though. william gibson had dealt with this issue in other books, but i think the central theme of the book (what happens when virtual worlds start to impinge on the real world?) was more interesting than the one you picked up on.