Q & A Week One

1. Maureen Furniss introduces her article with a discussion of the "denigrated status" of animation as an art form until relatively recently. As New Media artists and viewers, should we be mindful of the losses of the past and be archiving the history of new media by seeking out and preserving early works of animations that appeared first in BBS systems and home computers? Is what's already lost of any consequence?



2. If cinema, due to digital techniques, has become "a sub-genre of painting," as Manovich suggests, does this lessen or enhance its value as an index of the real?

3. If the Metaverse is the future of "remote collaboration, virtual tourism, shopping..." etc., does it then follow that a new class will be created of those who have the money, computing power and time to run the simulation?

In response to Phil and Matt, I think the article quite clearly lays out how users and researchers are taking it upon themselves to create a "metaverse" out of the tools already in existence. KML layers which create live data layers in Google Earth, model hotels, Second Life conferences- the metaverse is the ultimate try before you buy (or hack) experience merged with the Wiki-ethic of user/programmer collaboration.

I think in the long run, users of the internet run out of the escapist fuel rather quickly, finding that the melding of their real identity to their virtually identity to be far more productive and satisfying. What began as a lark or escape for the author has turned to a way to meet and get to know other people- "several of whom I know better than my real neighbors," says the author. Ironically this is only really likely because his avatar represents him truthfully instead of as a rock star, vampire or whatever. There is no escape from the real in the metaverse, as the point of the simulation itself is to bring the real into reach for the everyday person.

I think the real problems of the metaverse have already reared up with stories of sexual assault and violence scripts that people have come up with. There is also the never ending towers of scam towers built on square meter plots, and the horbes of beginners who have nothing better to do than harrass people in the virtual world. Luckily, in this case, it is a sim, so physical harm is not possible. However, the possiblities for the unscrupulous in the metaverse are large. This is the real problem with the virtual, in my opinion. Escapism, and virtual copies are fleeting activities and inconsequential to the mirrored reality of daily life. Getting socially engineered in a virtual environment by a clever chatter on the other hand is a real future problem.