In A Snow Crash World . . .

This is apparently a thing.

But is it anything more than gimmickry?

I can’t ever recall reading a book and thinking, “You know, this is a very intense part of the story. I need some kind of real-world stimulus to accentuate the fact that the characters’ predicament is making me happy, anxious, or in any other way emotionally stimulated.”

First of all, it’s because I don’t talk like that.

Second of all, it’s because the author’s words and my own brain’s creations envisioning the world thus created bear with them the physical stimulus I need to keep reading.

I can’t read of Aslan’s sacrifice, and his subsequent resurrection, without going into tears or feeling my heart pound with joy.

I can’t read of Sam’s despair when he realizes Frodo is going to keep the ring as he stands at the precipice of Mount Doom, to fail after having come so far, and not feel it with him.

I don’t need flashing LED lights or a sensory stimulation vest to do that kind of thing for me. The books I read are (mostly) capable of doing that with my own body and mind.

So it’s gimmickry.

We can’t be that out of touch with books or with stories that we need an external stimulus to make them real. If we do, we’re definitely reading the wrong kinds of books.

And I’m always very suspicious of people who use the word “protagonist.” I know it’s essential vocabulary. But most often I hear it used by people who are trying awfully hard.

Additionally, I hope the creators of this thing see the irony in using the novella “The Girl Who Was Plugged In” as the prototype story for their product. The story focuses on P. Burke, a deformed woman whose brain is used to control a genetically perfect individual named Delphi to shill products for the shadowy corporation that runs things in James Tiptree Jr’s story.

If this catches on – and that’s such a big if it’s visible from space – I can see where the quality of writing that’s attracted to this technology will be low. Good authors don’t need cheap lights or vibrations or a remote-controlled corset to help their readers connect with their characters. Things like this come and go. I remember back in college when the rage among the booky types was to package a compact disc of mood music along with their books, with notations of when to play certain tracks to go along with the story.

I know. Sounds as quaint as Tinkerbell waving her magic wand letting you know when to turn the page. Remember those records? Do they even make them any more?

The Real Snow Crash

Could Snow Crash lead to a plane crash?

That was the principal thought on my mind this morning as I read this piece at Slate.com about Northwest Flight 188, which overshot its destination airport by a hundred miles or so earlier this year because both pilot and co-pilot were absorbed in their laptop, teaching and learning about the airline's online employee scheduling system.

We've all done it -- driven deistracted. My weakness is the iPod and my insistence that I have to manually shuffle through the good songs on my way home from the bus. A handful of times I've caught myself so engrossed in trying to find TMBG's "Dr. Worm" that I'm not paying attention to the road, which is scrolling right along under my tires at 55 miles per hour. So I put the iPod away.

William Saletan, in his Slate piece, however, brings up an interesting point:

In his interview with investigators, the captain profusely apologized. He said he had "let another force come from the outside and distract me." But that isn't what happened on Flight 188. The force didn't come from outside. It came from inside. It enveloped the pilots' minds and shut down their senses. They lost touch with everything outside: their displays, the world beyond their windshield, the passengers behind the cockpit door.

We're all doing the same thing, zoning out at home, at work, on the road. Maybe all these nifty little devices are great for connecting us to the Internet, but we shouldn't let them disconnect us from the world.

So enters Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. I read this book a few years ago and recommend it for its philosophical implications, not necessarily for the story. Do we want virtual realities so real they take us away from the true reality? Are we so dedicated to the universes squeezed between our ears that we forget about the universe we can see through our eyes and hear through our ears? I hope not. But it's a tempting trap. I'm in front of the computer for about ten hours straight each work day. Then i go home, watch television during dinner most nights, then after the kids are to bed (and most of the time I'm too tired or distracted to read to them) I'm sitting in front of my laptop. Something's gotta stop, folks. Maybe rolling blackouts aren't such a bad idea after all.

Modern "me," Ancient "me"

Note: Another essay excerpt from a class I'm taking. I'm such a smart-ass.

As Hiro Protagonist attempts to comprehend why a modern demagogue would want to revive the language of ancient Sumer in Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, Protagonist and the Librarian have an illuminating conversation about the power and banality of words.

In discussing the writings of Sumer, including the me – “rules or principles that control the operation of society, like a code of laws, but on a more fundamental level (251),” the Librarian assigns them the following qualities:

1. Fragmentary (251)
2. Bizarre (251)
3. Untranslatable (251)
4. Monotonous (251)
5. Promotional (251)
6. Fundamentally religious (251)
7. Banal (257)

The most important descriptor, however, is thus: Sumerian myths, the Librarian continues, “are not ‘readable’ or ‘enjoyable’ in the same sense that Greek and Hebrew myths are. They reflect a fundamentally different consciousness from ours (251).”

Throughout his novel, Stephenson offers glimpses that the me of Hiro’s world match perfectly with the Librarian’s description of the Sumerian me. The me of Hiro’s time remain translatable, enjoyable and readable to our ears because they are not fundamentally different than what we’re used to hearing, they do not reflect a “fundamentally different consciousness from ours,” as Stephenson writes. Given time, however – say, a few thousand years, or the chronological difference between our time and that of Sumeria – and the me of Hiro’s era (and of ours) that survive may very well sound as bizarre as the stories the Librarian shares of Enki and Ninhursag (see pages 251-257).

Take, for example, the “usual” text that accompanies introductions to Mr. Lee’s Hong Kong burbclave: “It is my pleasure to welcome all quality folks to visiting of Hong Kong. Whether seriously in business or on a fun-loving hijink, make yourself totally homely in this meager environment. If any aspect is not utterly harmonious, gratefully bring is to my notice and I shall strive to earn your satisfaction (98).” The text is written in perfectly flawed English. To Mr. Lee, the English reflects the English that Anglo-Saxon Americans expect to hear from foreigners: the misused words, the odd sentence constructions, and the weird phrases. A native speaker of English can read the notice and feel a slight superiority, despite the fact that the Hong Kong burbclaves are among the most stable in the United States, and that its currency is of a much higher value than the American dollar. The me of Hong Kong burbclaves mocks the outsider’s sense of superiority with the expected mangled English and obsequiousness. In its banality and promotionalism, it is a powerful me.

Another example is the advertisement for the RadiKS Mark IV Smartwheel, which Y.T. purchases for her Kourier duties: “CHISELED SPAM is what you will see in the mirror if you surf on a weak plank with dumb, fixed wheels and interface with a muffler, retread, snow turd, road kill, driveshaft, railroad tie or unconscious pedestrian (27).” This advertising on a cutting-edge product – where rhetorical reliance is on the immediate here and now as compared to there here and now of six months ago has a me that has power among its intended audience, but like the flowery advertisements for cemeteries or the Sears catalog ubiquitous at the turn of the twentieth century, its me loses power exponentially with the passage of time. The me of wanting to buy the latest product may indeed be translatable, but the product itself may not.

These examples of Snow Crash me may indeed be incomprehensible to those who dig them up thousands of years hence. They had power when they were created, but like the Sumerian myths Hiro and the Librarian talk about, “the characters are legible and well-known, but when put together they do not say anything that leaves an imprint on the modern mind (251).”

Socialability Leading to Professional Work in Second Life

NOTE: This post is a short essay I wrote for one of my tech comm classes this week.

Nardi and Whittaker seem to have hit on a key component of establishing and nurturing useful, professional communication in virtual worlds like Second Life when they write “The creation and maintenance of communication zones involves two key processes: establishing social bonds that enable people to feel emotionally connected to one another, and managing ‘attentional contracts’ in which people agree (sometimes fleetingly) to pay attention to one another’s communications (page 4) ,” in their essay The Place of Face-to-Face Communication in Distributed Work.

I have noted that in the distributed environments in which I’ve worked, good communication hinges only secondarily on the necessity to exchange information, including small talk. I’m more willing to communicate – and communicate more honestly and openly – with co-workers with whom I’ve had positive social interactions, whether they take place inside or outside of work. Because our relationships with others tend to be dynamic rather than static, I agree with Nardi and Whittaker when they write that despite the advent of technology that makes distributed work easier, face-to-face communication remains “the most information-rich medium,” because “it is the surest way to establish and nurture the human relationships underlying business relationships (page 2).”

What is required is for technical communicators to think outside the box when it comes to using technology to create virtual (not literal) face-to-face communications that bring with them the social bonds and attentional contracts Nardi and Whittaker attribute to physical face-to-face meetings.

We’ve all experienced examples of virtual relationships establishing social bonds. For example, for the past two years, my wife and I have corresponded with a man in England, whom my wife first encountered when she responded to e-mails he sent to an archery equipment company she worked for. They built an easy e-mail friendship on mutual interests – she’d lived in England, both were interested in archery – that has been maintained and expanded, long past the time my wife quit working for the company where the initial contact was established. We have never met face to face, but through years of interacting via e-mail and with the occasional phone call, we have built a relationship that is “grounded in social bonding and symbolic expressions of commitment (page 2).” The symbolic expressions have gone beyond e-mails and phone calls to the exchange of gifts by mail, photo exchanges and ongoing letters to our eight-year-old son in which our English friend pretends to be Roddy from Flushed Away. We also maintain attentional contracts by responding to e-mails and listening to the mp3s and podcasts we exchange via e-mail, keeping up constant written correspondence that shows we care to listen to what the other has to say or share.


The same bonds, obviously, ought to be achievable in virtual worlds like Second Life, once users realize, like Tex Avery cartoon characters, that to truly interact that fourth wall (the screen) has to be broken. (A simple example: Droopy Dog is known for forever turning to the audience and exclaiming, in his sad voice, "You know what? I'm happy.") To tell the truth, I’ve been handicapped a bit in building social interactions in Second Life, but I’ve come to realize it’s not the technology that’s getting in the way – it’s the personality. It takes me a long time to make and maintain friendships in the real world, so I should not expect anything different in the virtual world. I should not get hung up on the fact that I’m having a difficult time with the shorthand communication that seems to be the norm in Second Life. I should, as Nardi and Whittaker recommend, focus on “not what people communicate about, but how they create a social environment in which they can communicate at all (page 3).” I can see now that my attempts to communicate with random strangers on Second Life were as fruitless as such attempts in the real world not because of the virtual environment, but because the social bonding and attentional contracting had not taken place.

Obviously, participants in our class’ Second Life meetings have found a way to create that social environment. Just in reading the discussions about that meeting in Blackboard have shown that Second Life does indeed have potential to bring people together socially to form those bonds necessary for work. The meetings seem to resemble a dinner Nardi and Whittaker write about: “The dinner was not a forum for exchanging business information; rather clients used the occasion to share details of the minor miseries of their work lives. It facilitated social bonding after the initial, task-focused pre-production meeting. As far as the work itself was concerned, that was already accomplished (page 10).” Obviously, if we could build on our sociality in Second Life, transmuting our interactions into a professional classroom setting, where we exchange ideas and information could also easily be accomplished. Rather than posting assignments such as this on Blackboard, we could just as easily exchange them with the virtual cards we’ve all received, giving us instruction on various Second Life aspects, much as Hiro and Juanita exchange information via cards in Snow Crash. With a little more practice and a stint at looking how Second Life could help us organize exchanged information, I can see how we could easily move our interactions from Blackboard to Second Life – barring the inherent difficulties with synchronous participation versus the advantages Blackboard’s asynchronous communication offers.

Many of us were critical of the DIVE approach to communicating and organizing – but upon further reflection, it’s clear how such organization could work to bring together the advantages of synchronous and asynchronous communication in a work setting. The possibilities, I see, are only opening.

Second Life as the Metaverse: Similarities and Differences in the Rule of Law

NOTE: This post is from a class I'm taking right now on virtual workplaces.

Neal Stephenson paints the Metaverse in his novel "Snow Crash" as a chaotic, laissez-faire society where laws and computer code suit those who create them and democracy is available only to the powerful or the powerfully talented. It is a utopia – but only for a select few. It is a place of business and commerce – for a select few. It is a place to gather and commingle – but the best gathering and commingling is reserved for a select few. It is a fount of information – for those who want it and can afford it. So it is not a utopia. It is not democratic. The masses do not enter the Metaverse and immediately find themselves on equal footing with their peers. It is, in fact, only a virtual re-creation of the real world Hiro Protagonist and the other characters in “Snow Crash” live in; a society just as ugly, amoral and chaotic as its virtual counterpart.

Second Life, too, is no utopia. But because the society it reflects is more controlled, more serene than the society reflected in the Metaverse, it is a much more pleasant place to visit. Second Life has achieved that pleasantness through creating a basic set of behavioral rules that reflect the accepted norms of our Democratic (with the big D) and capitalistic society.

Second Life’s rules (viewable at secondlife.com/corporate/cs.php) reflect our societies thusly:

1) The “Big Six” rules, preaching against intolerance, harassment, assault, disclosure of personal information, indecency and disturbing the peace.
2) “Global Standards, Local Ratings,” which allow for “mature” niches in an otherwise “PG” world.
3) Global attacks, which forbid disruption of the Second Life universe or servers with malicious scripts or objects.
4) Caveat Emptor, or buyer beware. Commerce is allowed in Second Life, but purchases are made at risk, just as they are in real life.

These rules uphold common Democratic principles, in that localities should impose or lift rules on morals without or with minimal interference from a higher authority while accepting that some rules are universal.

Rules in the Metaverse are harder to pin down, partially because they’re not as clearly spelled out in Stephenson’s novel as Second Life’s rules are on their website, and mostly because the reflected society itself gets along with fewer rules. But there are rules to be followed.

In the Metaverse and the society it reflects, law and order are not provided – they are bought and paid for. In reality, Stephenson’s “burbclaves” pay private security firms or engage in their own elaborate security measures (such as the Rat Things in the Hong Kong franchulates and the Vigilante White Rule/Black Power memes of the segregationist burbclaves) to preserve order.

In the Metaverse equivalent of reality’s “burbclaves,” local rules are again the norm. The Black Sun, for example, employs daemon bouncers to roust out anyone who is “being disruptive . . . anyone who is pestering or taping a celebrity, and . . . anyone who seems contagious. That is, if your personal computer is infected with viruses, and attempts to spread them via the Black Sun, you had better keep one eye on the ceiling (p. 55).” The Metaverse, however, allows for clever hackers like Hiro Protagonist to find cracks and niches to exploit, with the understanding – or at least the tolerance – of those in power who allow his activity to continue. Da5id’s tolerance of Hiro’s “Bigboard” program, which occasionally plays havoc with The Black Sun’s programming, is one example of an individual being allowed to break community rules, such as they are.

Buyer beware is certainly a rule applied in the Metaverse – Hiro, certainly, is wary of any hypercards he’s offered, and criticized Da5id for accepting a hypercard from a “black and white,” or an avatar created inexpensively at a public access kiosk.

In Second Life, law and order is the rule of the day. There exist an equivalent of “burbclaves” in Second Life – areas ranked for mature behavior, and private residences of-limits to those not invited. These areas are offered to allow for truly Democratic use of Second Life and reflects our real societal desire for privacy and relative freedom from offense.

Second Life has a similar tolerance of Hiro’s “Bigboard” in allowing untested objects and scripts to be tried out in “sandbox” areas. Second Life’s rules, however, are unclear if tests in these areas that are disruptive will result in disciplinary action.

This is where two critical differences between the rule of law in Second Life versus the Metaverse comes in to play: In Second Life, discipline is left up to a board of humans that will judge the miscreant on the severity of the offense and levy appropriate punishment. In the Metaverse, discipline is left up to daemons – programs like The Black Sun’s Bouncers – and individuals who take the “law” into their own hands (Hiro’s dismembering of the upstart Nipponese barring his access to Sushi K in The Black Sun and his “disarming” of the Cliff avatar trying to infect him with the Snow Crash virus – both acts performed without consequence – stand out as examples).

Additionally, Second Life applies its discipline universally, both inside and out of its “burbclaves.” In the Metaverse, what rules are outlined seem to apply only in selected areas.

That greater rules of law are applied in Second Life reflects well on the orderly society in which we live our real lives. The skewed rule of law in the Metaverse is merely a reflection of the skewed reality.