Coherent Blog

The Uncanny Valley. This is a tremendously important concept for online social environments AND MMO computer games, yet apparently some people are completely unaware that it exists.

What is the Uncanny Valley? It’s a level of realism in humanoid robots (and by extension online environments) where MORE realism becomes LESS “rightness”, or “familiarity” to the image or animation.

This is why World of Warcraft looks better than EQ2, despite being less realistic in appearance.

I frequently cite this review by Gabe of Penny Arcade when discussing EQ2. The reason he treats it as harshly as he does is the Uncanny Valley phenomenon, although he doesn’t seem to be aware of it by that name.

The Internet is a Sex Toy

I was idly thinking about all the stuff you could consider the internet; information source, commerce platform, communications device…  and, yes, sex toy.  Marital aide.  Self-discovery facilitator. Kink and fetish directory.

This was a comment written in response to a post on Apogeevr.com wherein Noche discusses her take on furry sex.

I’m a furry, or at least I enjoy playing one on SL (and FurryMUCK, and Tapestries, etc). I’m something of an expert on Furry sex. I have an impressive body of simulated furry sexual experience online.

And of course, you’re absolutely right. Furryness is an opportunity to escape human conventions. The funny thing is, a lot of furries don’t leave behind their veneer of civilization as they do so. Mostly they desire freedom from judgement, or at least the company of others who share their peculiarities. If you’re interested in furry sex, but you’re capable of being shocked by ANY kink or fetish, then you’re not ready

One can argue that you won’t find a lot of genuine primitiveness online - you can’t. You’re in a very ‘cool’ media environment as you project your primitive persona, so the layer of civilization is always there as a means to express oneself. The primitive persona ends up being a skillful simulation. That said, some people are very good at it, making it a worthwhile endeavor sexually. However, in order to do that, they need to display an uncommon level of verbal (textual) descriptive skills, which is not generally associated with primitive urges. Primitive urges tend towards somatic expression, which makes them difficult to express in ANY online environment… Especially SL, where somatic expression requires weeks of working with Poser just to get started.

So when you have a good ‘primitive’ sexual experience online, you are the recipient not of the abilities of someone in touch with his or her primitive side, but rather someone who has the ability to project a skillful simulation of this through words.

This is a test of my wordpress blog, which will also hopefully test the LJ crossposting plugin.

I want to write briefly about passion, the dreams of youth. I have a little secret to tell everyone: Life is actually pretty boring. [I don’t drink or do drugs] But read “pretty” as “very” or “mind-numbingly”. Maybe I’m different from most people, maybe I require more stimulation than most. Maybe not! Although maybe most people don’t realize how lame their lives have become - it takes so long to creep up on them that they can’t quite internalize how little there is for them to actually do in the long stretch of years. Which is why, I suppose, so many people end up in front of the TV for four hours a day, or blankly surfing the internet (almost as bad).

Yeah, sure; have kids! Go for dreams of success or avarice! But can you summon the same enthusiasm that you could when you were, say, 15, 16, when you were seized with a sense of the endless possibilities ahead of you? Passion! Reward! Something that gets you up out of bed in the morning with a will! We gradually let those dreams go, but we don’t have to.

I’m writing this entry because I just watched the last episode of an anime series called Comic Party which is about a student’s path towards becoming a dojinshi artist. The theme of the anime is subtle but telling: There are joys aplenty in life, for sure, but one consistent reward is to be a part of something you love, to have a passion that opens your eyes and brings a smile to your face. It’s like retaining your youth, you bear the burdens of time easier when you know that you are doing what you love. It is a sublime reward to be fired with enthusiasm, when you can feel the force moving through you, when you’ve got your mojo on. It’s a religious experience without the dogma - you become one with your personal holy spirit.

(Maybe that’s what Bruce Sterling was getting at in Holy Fire, hmmm!)

In Comic Party, the character tries to become a dojinshi artist for a variety of reasons, and fails several times because he becomes demotivated in one way or another. At the end, he realizes that as long as even one person loves his drawing, as long as he even has one fan, it is worth continuing because he knows then that at least one person will enjoy his work. He will reach at least one person, and as long as he does, it will make him happy; let him feel that effervescent joy of creation inside of himself.

You know the joy I’m talking about, you must have felt it at some point in your life. Well, some people never let go of that, and you know, they have pretty good lives. Passionate lives, filled with fun and friends and inner glory.

Holy crap, it’s a supercar! Toyota has announced a hybrid sports car, the “Volta” that will have 408 horsepower and be able to travel 435 miles on a 13.7 gallon tank. It looks like hot shit too. It can go from 0-60 in 4 seconds. It will cost 72,000 dollars, but it’s an amazingly unique car. If I had more money than I knew what to do with, I would totally buy one.

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/toyota-pm4.htm

I ran through Far Cry (a first person shooter) in the last week, and I just want to say that it’s the most beautiful graphics engine I’ve ever seen. The smooth terrains, the infinite view distance, the reflective water… Amazing! You could literally look across the islands to the most distant dot on the horizon, and then walk/swim, terrain permitting, all the way there, with no load screens, no jerkiness, just smooth, smooth graphics. You could enter and exit buildings, walk all the way through them, no level loads, not even a hiccup. And the reflective water! Looking just cloudy enough to seem like real water, no repetitive patterns, just like reality. You could see the moon shimmer exactly as it does in real life, and objects and terrain were flawlessly reflected, rippling in the water. Even people with guns, firing at you, reflected in the water.

The game play wasn’t bad either, really fun actually, involving a good selection of weapons, grenades, excellent AI… And really well-devised locations, dripping with interestingness, ranging from a bombed-out Japanese carrier to a high-tech laboratory to ancient ruins of some forgotten people.

The only real flaw with Far Cry lay in the story. It was weak, almost no writing. The Japanese ruins lead you to think of some mysterious WWII legacy to uncover. Nope, nothing. Then the ancient civ ruins. Nothing! Just locations to blow shit up in. Not that it’s bad, necessarily, but I was looking forward to some creepy plot involving forbidden WWII research, or the secrets of ancient, dead civilizations brought to light. *shakes head* Uh-uh. No such luck. Just something about a random mad scientist and a hot CIA agent with pouting breasts and supple thighs. Oh yes, and the obligatory nuclear bomb.

But overall, I would have to rank Far Cry as a definite “buy”. It was a dose of goodness, it kept me moving, provided tense moments, and gave me a goodly amount of interesting ways of inflicting carnage on the ravening hordes of darkness.

Lol, Microsoft finally defused that particular bomb. They had 56 billion dollars in cash and the whole industry has been holding it’s breath, wondering if they were going to go on a technology spending spree.

However, they’re cutting their cash reserves and giving it back to the shareholders. Why are they doing this? Principally because it gives billions of dollars to Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer and the Microsoft execs who hold huge chunks of stock. Ahh, corporate greed, I never thought I would think it was a good thing. But in this case, it is a very good thing: It means that Microsoft isn’t going to be stomping on any large companies in the near future. Hopefully, no small companies either.

http://money.cnn.com/2004/07/20/technology/microsoft/index.htm?cnn=yes

I saw I, Robot, tonight. To my shock and horror… It was good! Well, not so much horror as shock. I expected absolutely nothing from this movie, it looked like so much dreck and garbage from the previews.

I will tell you this: it comes together very nicely. Will Smith gives a nice performance as Del Spooner, who hates robots… For a pretty good reason. Sonny stars as himself, a homicidal robot… for a pretty good reason. Some random woman plays Susan Calvin, who is astonishingly like the Susan Calvin in Asimov’s stories, more robot than human herself.

WEAPONS OF CHOICE
By John Birmingham
GENRE Weapons-grade military techno-thriller
THE SETUP The year is 2021. An ultra-high-tech multinational battle fleet (led by the U.S.S. Hillary Clinton, a George Bush — class supercarrier) is cruising off the coast of Indonesia, when suddenly a nearby high-energy physics experiment has a whoopsie, and the year isn’t 2021 anymore. It’s 1942, shortly before the Battle of Midway. So much for history as we know it. Birmingham could have just left this story as one big battle scene — he describes military hardware with an exuberance and virtuosity that’s positively Clancyesque — but he also shows a surprisingly tender touch with his characters, who react to their unexpected time trip with authentic, believable anguish.

I’m a sucker for military science fiction, and I see nothing wrong with time travel as a plot hook. I adored The Final Countdown, but regretted that it was only a movie, with a movie’s inherent shallowness. It did a good job of bringing the wonder, though, which I appreciated greatly.

This looks like Final Countdown, part II, The Revenge. Yay!