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From: yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu (Brian Yamauchi)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: Cyberpunk/space/tech/virtual-reality
Message-ID: <1989Dec11.182321.10799@cs.rochester.edu>
Date: 11 Dec 89 18:23:21 GMT
References: <4860@blake.acs.washington.edu>
Reply-To: yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu (Brian Yamauchi)
Organization: University of Rochester Computer Science Department
Lines: 51

In article <4860@blake.acs.washington.edu> maddox@blake.acs.washington.edu (Tom Maddox) writes:
>
>	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.  

>What are the factors that will shape the development, 
>implementation, and use of the technologies?  What will be the social destiny 
>of virtual reality?  

>	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.

>The street has its uses for technology, 
>sure; so do the corporations, so does the Department of Defense.  

I think discussion of the social effects of virtual reality would be
completely compatible with the charter of sci.virtual-worlds (or
sci.cyberspace, or whatever).  After all, if social science doesn't
belong in sci.* then why do sci.econ and sci.psychology exist?

On the other hand, I don't think sci.virtual-worlds should become a
free-fire zone for moralistic flamewars between hawks and doves,
socialists and libertarians, law-and-order types and
anti-establishment cyperpunks, etc.

It's one thing to speculate on how virtual reality will be used as a
weapon or as a drug, but it's another to pontificate on how the former
is the result of "the bloodthirsty military-industrial complex" or how
the latter is the legacy of "the mindless hippie generation".

_______________________________________________________________________________

Brian Yamauchi				University of Rochester
yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu		Computer Science Department
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