Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.64.0901211625380.6381@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.aol.com>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: theory packed analysis
Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2009 16:25:52 -0500 (EST)
theory packed analysis the physics engines in virtual worlds lead to holes and confusions; what- isthis i don't know, something swooped by; it's probably one of mine however ownership is defined; in telejump incremental teleports tending towards the same location consistently jump the avatar around on what might be considered an acre of space or so; the jumps appear random; they have to be determined; there's no weather only whether; that's more profound than it might seem to be; on first reading; after a while working in these space you pay more attention to the tropes; i remember our first travels in the everglades; we'd look at the alligators and larger fauna in general; after a while we were down to the level of insects and periphy- ton; our living in the world changed in relation to the increasing depth of our knowledge of the land; going from macro- to micro-scopic; beginning to comprehend the skein of that part of the world; in second life some- thing similar happens but to a lesser degree; there's nothing all the way down or rather the plateau is shallower; that makes virtual worlds all the safer; not to mention the lack of alterity, at last so far; you can always log out; nothing follows you; you're always already in the process of being-born; there's no annihilation; you might disappear for a while; you might in fact vanish; what jon marshall calls 'ascence'; the states are always mixed, superimposed, in-between; but without depth; there's no laterality; no continuum; so the symptoms themselves become obdurate; as if there were a depleted and impoverished granularity to the world; that granularity and no further; for that matter the physics itself peters out; you wouldn't get for example quantum phenomena on the scale of the bit; or at least you might get at best some sort of formulaic approach; on the other hand the grain of space-time might well meet the grain of gamespace; on the order of dozens of magnitudes smaller; where you're playing is safe that way; there's no holes to fall through; games survive miraculous hacks but they don't survive corporate collapse; except as remnants or reminders of saved databases; saved in part; like the programmed texts in moos or muds; so i'm a virtual-worker like a sex-worker or cultural- worker; so in clearing grounds or trying out one thing or another i notice stuff; like the texture moving by at high speed or the avatar telejump to nowhere as if it were out of control; that's perception for you; one might think if one believed anything that god was a game-engine; that's not in the subjunctive; so a virtual-worker gives hirself to the game; hir safe-self; there's no turtles all the way down; the void is parameterized; for that matter emptiness; which takes on the quality of an ontology within the virtual; that much is clear; http://www.alansondheim.org/telejump.mov http://www.alansondheim.org/whatisthis.png