"Rushkoff, Douglas - Cyberia" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rushkoff Douglas)

VR, as it's called, replaces the computer screen with a set of 3-D, motion-sensitive
goggles, the speaker with a set of 3-D headphones, and the mouse with a glove or tracking
ball. The user gains the ability to move through a real or fictional space without using
commands, text, or symbols. You put on the goggles, and you see a building, for example.
You walk'' with your hand toward the doorway, open the door, and you're inside. As you do
all this, you see the door approaching in complete perspective. Once you open the door, you
see the inside of the building. As you turn your head to the left, you see what's to the left. As
you look up, you see the ceiling. As you look to the right, let's say, you see a painting on the
wall. It's a picture of a forest. You walk to the painting, but you don't stop. You go into the
painting. Then you're in the forest. You look up, see the sun through the trees, and hear the
wind rustle through the leaves. Behind you, you hear a bird chirping.
Marc de Groot (the Global Village ham radio interface) was responsible for that
behind you'' part. His work involved the creation of 3-D sound that imitates the way the
body detects whether a sound is coming from above, below, in front, or behind. To him, VR
is a milestone in human development.
Virtual reality is a way of mass-producing direct experience. You put on the goggles
and you have this world around you. In the beginning, there were animals, who had nothing
but their experience. Then man came along, who processes reality in metaphors. We have
symbology. One thing stands for another. Verbal noises stand for experience, and we can
share experience by passing this symbology back and forth. Then the Gutenberg Press
happened, which was the opportunity to mass-produce symbology for the first time, and that
marked a real change. And virtual reality is a real milestone too, because we're now able for
the first time to mass-produce the direct experience. We've come full circle.''
Comparisons with the Renaissance abound in discussions of VR. Just as the 3-D
holograph serves as our cultural and scientific equivalent of the Renaissance's perspective
painting, virtual reality stands as a 1990s computer equivalent of the original literacy
movement. Like the printing press did nearly five hundred years ago, VR promises pop
cultural access to information and experience previously reserved for experts.
De Groot's boss at VPL, Jaron Lanier, paints an even rosier picture of VR and its
impact on humanity at large. In his speaking tours around the world, the dredlocked inventor
explains how the VR interface is so transparent that it will make the computer disappear. Try
to remember the world before computers. Try to remember the world of dreaming, when you
dreamed and it was so. Remember the fluidity that we experienced before computers. Then
you'll be able to grasp VR.'' But the promise of virtual reality and its current level of
development are two very different things. Most reports either glow about future possibilities
or rag on the crudeness of today's gear. Lanier has sworn off speaking to the media for
precisely that reason.
There's two levels of virtual reality. One is the ideas, and the other is the actual gear.
The gear is early, all right? But these people from Time magazine came in last week and said,
`Well, this stuff's really overblown,' and my answer's like, `Who's overblowing it?'--you
know? It reminds me of an interview with Paul McCartney in the sixties where some guy
from the BBC asked him if he did any illegal activities, and he answered, `Well, actually,
yes.' And the reporter asked `Don't you think that's horrible to be spreading such things to the
youth of the country?' and he said, `I'm not doing that. You're doing that.' ''
But the press and the public can't resist. The promise of VR is beyond imagination.
Sure, it makes it possible to simulate the targeting and blow-up of an Iraqi power plant, but
as a gateway to Cyberia itself, well ... the possibilities are endless. Imagine, for example, a
classroom of students with a teacher, occurring in real time. The students are from twelve
different countries, each plugged in to a VR system, all modemed to the teacher's house. They
sit around a virtual classroom, see one another and the teacher. The teacher explains that