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From: maddox@blake.acs.washington.edu (Tom Maddox)
Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk,alt.cyberspace,alt.cyberpunk.tech,news.groups
Subject: Cyberpunk/space/tech/virtual-reality
Message-ID: <4860@blake.acs.washington.edu>
Date: 11 Dec 89 06:40:51 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Univ of Washington, Seattle
Lines: 72


	My curiosity has been piqued by the recent discussions concerning 
appropriate distinctions in the various cyber/space/punk/tech/virtual-worlds 
forums.  This posting is my attempt to sort out some of the implications for 
myself.  

	We have at present alt.cyberpunk, alt.cyberspace, alt.cyberpunk-tech; 
we have sci.virtual-worlds proposed.  There has been an attempt to separate 
"scientific" from "lifestyles" discussions; "realistic" from "fictive" virtual 
worlds; cyberpunk from cyberspace, cyberspace from virtual reality.  

	All these groups and distinctions behind them have reference to the 
ever more effective and complex interactions among humans and computers.  Some
of the technology appears far off, other does not, but we do not understand 
the consequences of even the very close technology--virtual imaging 
glasses, for instance, seem to me likely to be a comer with many possibilities, 
which will engage social and economic realities, which in turn will drive the 
technology, and so forth.  Given this necessary interplay among complex forces,
it seems certain to me that reality will not observe the distinctions many of
the people discussing these issues want to maintain; further, that any strong
understanding of these issues will require thinking about the systematic
interplay of forces.  

	Let me make a simple point in this regard:  much of the interest in 
current virtual reality technology comes from the military; any attempt to 
understand the future of the technology that does not take this into account
will be crippled.  

	Many of the people directly concerned with the design and 
implementation of such technologies do not want to engage such concerns.  They
want to know what can be done and how to do it.  What will happen next, many
of them say, is not their particular concern.  However, for most of us, what
happens next is what *is* interesting.  Will we have relatively more humane 
wars with few human soldiers or total wars with horribly efficient non-human 
soldiers?  Will we have virtual realities geared to helping us explore the
boundaries of our humanity, or virtual realities that encourage us to become
expert masturbators?  What are the factors that will shape the development, 
implementation, and use of the technologies?  What will be the social destiny 
of virtual reality?  

	I sense, however, that insofar as the techies smell the imminent 
possibility of virtual reality, they want to banish such concerns.  In much of 
the recently-stated eagerness to get to the technical nitty-gritty, I sense a 
welcome relief:  after all, humanity's interaction with this stuff is so 
*messy*, while technical issues, though complex and difficult, are clean.  

	Recently there have been a number of statements 
dismissive of Gibson and fiction as inadequate to do the job--and of course 
that's true if one is concerned only technique.  However, contrary to one 
assertion, Gibson has done more than give cyberspace a name; he also gave it 
a local habitation--he showed that whatever the nature of the technology, it 
will be employed in all-too-human ways.  And contrary to another assertion,
cyberpunk is not lacking in moral effect:  the world of the Sprawl, for 
instance, is itself a complex moral text; and I would also offer a few of
my own stories--"Snake Eyes" perhaps most directly--as attempts to extrapolate
the moral context of human-computer connection.
	
	Maybe I'm saying little more than this:  don't attempt to clean up
the cyberpunk/space/virtual reality  act too quickly.  The fundamental 
distinctions, technically and otherwise, are not yet clear, and many of the 
most interesting things that will happen with this technology will be generated 
out of its interplay with intensely human concerns.  Some of the virtual 
reality folks want to banish fictioneers to the other room so they can get on 
with it, and that's fine, but I'd remind them that our voices will ultimately 
be heard.  I'd also remind them that any attempt at this point in history to 
think of science and technology in isolation from their social and political 
context is a form of intense myopia.  The street has its uses for technology, 
sure; so do the corporations, so does the Department of Defense.  

	[If you want to flame me for any of this, do us all a favor:  use 
mail.  I really don't want to be at the center of another flame-war in 
alt.cyber/whatever.]