Thursday, October 30, 2008

The Environment of Gaia

Since this week is Halloween, virtual communities all over are having Halloween related events like which usually include trick or treating, new haunted areas, or characters in costume. Gaia Online is no different as the shop clerks wear spooky clothes, candies are out for collecting, and Halloween items are out there to wear. I will examine these events as well as the environmental and personal interactions within Gaia as a whole.
The human interactions in Gaia are extremely limited due to the fact the avatars contain several complex customizable accessory sprites. As far as I can tell all you can do to interact with other people is to chat with each other as if you were using AIM or MSN messenger. You have a list of animating emoticons you can use which are displayed above your avatar’s head. The only real actions your avatar can show others are running and sitting. Speaking of sitting you can’t even sit down in a chair. There are chairs you put in your house but you can in no way sit in them. When your avatar can’t even sit in a chair you know that this world is limited.

One of the player interactions I thought would be really fun was the rally. You can go to a race track and race your friends in your car. Sadly this is just as limited as the rest of the experience. All you can control is your acceleration. The track just goes straight so there is no turning involved. True there are some obstacles but you are expected to slow down to avoid them. Also since it is near Halloween these obstacles include zombies and UFOs. It would have felt much more realistic if you could drive your car to get around the towns, or at least to get in between cities. Like the obstacles here the rest of Gaia is all set up for Halloween.

To represent trick or treating player can either go to shops or towns. In shop the store clerks will give you candy once every few minutes. If you go to towns you can click on candy dispensers to get candy. Both experiences are lacking. After all the whole concept of trick or treating is that you say “trick or treat”. At least in World of War Craft you can talk to the person in charge of the Inn and say trick or treat.
In the towns there are some ways you can interact with the environment. Your avatar can shake bushes to get money, collect the bugs that fly around, pick up litter, and dig up flowers. This doesn’t sound like much and when you compare it to other online communities it really isn’t. In War Craft you can mine from stones, fish, swim under water, and much more. Your options in Second Life are pretty much limitless thanks to user generated content. Of course being a browser game a lot of Gaia’s interactions take place on other sections of the Gaia Online website. For example you can play pinball, cards, jigsaw puzzles, and numerous other events with several people. Sadly your interactions are still pretty much limited to simply chatting. You can see their avatars and view their progress but in the end you are all just playing your own games. Wouldn’t it be cool if there was a multiplayer mode for some of these? What if you could solve puzzles together?   

In conclusion when it comes right down to it Gaia Online is nothing but a chat program with elaborate avatars, a shop, and games to play on the side. Direct interactions between avatars don’t exist. They are extremely lifeless and just stand there. Sure they look pretty but when all is said and done words and looks speak louder than actions in Gaia

Thursday, October 16, 2008

The Diamond Age Conclusion

After putting Diamond Age down for more than two years I have finally read the last 80 pages. The conclusion to this story felt very sudden but fitting to the rest of the book. I couldn’t help but feel slightly disappointed when the bells of St. Mark’s cathedral began to ring I know that my time with Nell, Hackworth, Miranda, and the others was over.
Doctor X’s quest to create the seed is one element I felt did not have a full conclusion. It is true that Nell succeeded in stopping the drummers from completing their action and killing Miranda. However, the drummers would stay in there den waiting to complete their process for years. It would be easy for Doctor X to just replace Miranda with someone else. The seed has obviously been crucial to the plot of Diamond Age, so why is there no conclusion for it.

The chain of events in The Diamond Age was mostly caused by the actions of John Percival Hackworth. Through out the story I felt sympathy for this character as he when through several humiliating and difficult times. Yet this character largely brought about his problems. His attempt to make an illegal copy of the primer for his daughter was selfish and didn’t really matter in the end as Fiona Hackworth gained her own copy of the primer regardless. If only John Hackworth could have been patient he would have avoided so much trouble. When we last see John he is trying to pass the mouse army which of course was something of his own creation. It is hard to say what lies in his future but perhaps Dr. X is correct and Hackworth cannot go against his instinct to fulfill clever methods.

I feel that the mouse army is among the most ingenious ideas Stephenson created in this book. To think that twelve-year-old girls could pose such a threat to other powerful organizations was unheard of. However as Nell demonstrated in her escape from the Fist, the primer clearly makes young ladies a force to be reckoned with. At first I thought that was the wrong thing to teach girls, but in a dystopian future where rape is occurring often self defense is a invaluable skill to have.

Nell has been searching for Miranda and Miranda the same for most of the book. Finally they meet but like the seed the events that follow are not fully worked out. In my experience there are two types of novelist. The novelist who does not tell the reader the future of the characters after the main story is over. It is up to the reader to come up with their own interpretation of what the characters will do. The other type of novelist is the one who will give the readers an epilogue explaining the aftermath of the major events of the book. 

J. R. Tolkein is without a doubt the later as he presents his readers with an epilogue several pages in length about the after math of The Lord of the Rings. This not only tells what happens to most of the characters after the event, but even details their lives up until death. Neal Stephenson on the other prefers to not set the future events of Diamond Age in stone. He leaves the ending open so readers are free to come up with their own ideas of what happens next. Personally I imagine Miranda and Nell seeing other face to face for the first time and embracing one another as if they were mother and daughter since the beginning.

Thursday, October 9, 2008

My Experience With Gaia Online

For my virtual world I chose Gaia Online. This community is very casual and does not require as much commitment as a game like World of War Craft does. I will explore the many things you can do in Gaia and just what your avatar is capable of.  
I started an account on Gaia Online and created an avatar. Unlike other games I feel that the avatars on Gaia feel a bit limited in some ways. First of all you have to be human, at least in the beginning. I made a character who does not really resemble me much. His skin color is like mine, but his hair color, hair style, and eye color are completely different than myself. He has a wide grin and now I am not sure how to change his facial expression. The features I just mentioned are the only way you can change the body of your avatar. Everything else has to do with the clothes you wear and accessories.
The closest thing that comes to an introductory sequence in Gaia Online is a small tutorial area. Sadly it is easily missed if you go directly to your house. Gaia is a browser game so you will be doing a lot of web site navigation. You have to choose to go to a town in order to experience this tutorial area. If you go to your house you will not get the tutorial. Navigation is a simple as clicking your mouse on the area you want to move to. The Non player characters explain how to move and how to stay safe on the web. They also advise you to go all out with your avatar and come up with an interesting style. The bulk of the game play of Gaia has to do with making money to buy lots of items for your avatar. Until recently there was not a battle system so everything revolved around mini games which include puzzles, card games, pinball, and several others.  I felt that my avatar was very lame in comparison to everyone else. Just go into a town and you’ll see an angel walking around with dozens of radiant items.

Though money is important players can get items through other means. You can gather bugs, junk, and flowers on ground in towns and turn them in. Junk can become clothing while bugs become ink which can be used for tattoos. Flowers can become decorations. Also every day the daily chance cart appears on the top of the website. Clicking on it gives players free money and free items.   

There are other features that make Gaia Feel like your own personalized world. Unlike other games any player can get big things for free. You always start the game with a house. You can buy lots of furniture to fill your house. Sadly I’m still pretty poor so my house is very empty at this point.

Another really cool feature is that at any time you can go get a car for free. The car you get looks like a mess but you can buy all kinds of parts and paint jobs for it. Then after you take a short and easy driver’s quiz you can go out to a track and race your friends in your own custom car. It’s cool, but I think it would feel even more fun if you could go between towns by driving.  

One of the new features added is the aquarium. This is a highly realistic, as you can change the temperature in the tank, feed the fish, and just make sure all the fish are healthy. Like in real life the fish will eventually die but it is all about taking care of them and making sure they last as long as you can. I don’t think other MMO games have had an aquarium in them. This is one of the reasons Gaia is so accessible to everyone. 

I really feel that my avatar has a noob beach bum feel. He wears shorts, a tattered red vest, sandals, a straw hat, and there is an octopus sitting on his head. All these items were either free or dirt cheap. Still even if he does not possess the glimmering wings, armor, or style of the other avatars I still like him. He is based on an anime character I like who is actually dressed in the same shabby manner.

Before the announcement of a MMORPG mode in which you fight monsters Gaia has largely been a more casual realistic experience. The only thing really fantastic about the game are the many ways you can make your avatar look. The world around you felt like an ordinary town. It was the incredible avatars who made the game so interesting to look at. 

Cyber Punk Time Line

1982

Movies
Android - The plot of this films seems really similar to Blade Runner as one of the main characters later learns he is in an android. Also androids are illegal on Earth just like in blade runner.

Liquid Sky - A movie about aliens who devour endorphins after humans gets hi on heroin. It took place in present day, but it had a very dystopian feel. 
Tron

Blade Runner (original) 

Events
CBM announces next system: The Commodore 64 - Computers are becoming more and more advanced. This undoubtedly affected how Cyber Punk writers wrote.

Gibson attends ArmadilloCon and reads the first chapter of Neuromancer. - ArmadilloCon is the second longest running Science Fiction Convention. It is held annually in Texas. Since Neuraomancer is such an important book in Cyber Punk it is paramount that Gibson was getting people into it.

Books 
Life, the Universe, and Everything is published - 

Petra

Software is released by Rudy Rucker - This is yet another story about androids, and the plot revolves around free will and the human identity as the main character is to have his brain transferred into software. There is also a civil war on the moon which makes for a very dystopian mood.

Medical - Genes associated with Cancer

1983


Movies
War Games - Perhaps for the first time in film the destruction potential of computers was presented.

Videodrome - Shows attempts to show the effects of new technology. Videos can be used to cause people to think violent thoughts.

Star Wars: Return of the Jedi - In this film we see Darth Vader without the mask for the first time. After seeing the man who has always been little more than a machine we were forced to question the humanity of cyborgs.

Events
Gibson, Sterling, and Shiner visit Rudy Rucker - The greatest minds behind Cyber Punk meet together. Undoubtedly the discussed there work and possibly exhanged notes. Most likely this would lead to new ideas for future Cyber Punk stories

The word "Transrealism coined by Rudy Rucker - This combines fantasy elements in Science Fiction with current perceptions of reality.

AT&T cell phones released - Communication technology was drastically enhanced by this release. It would only be a matter of time before we would be in contact with eachother all the time. This would also 
C++ developed
Personal Computer featured as man of the year in Time Magazine (Titled Machine of the Year)

Books and Stories
Cyberpunk published 
Tales of Houdini
Red Star, Winter Orbit
Cheap Truth - This was a news letter developed by the Cyber Punk movement. This would enable them to spread information about this new literary movement


Thursday, October 2, 2008

Red Star, Winter Orbit: Dystopia in Space

Gibson’s story, Red Star, Winter Orbit possess several details that make it fit in Cyber Punk. Space travel has been improved and mankind tries to escape earth. Korolev is a very good character for Cyber Punk as technological advances have taken their toll on him. Lastly the image of the future in Red Star is far more realistic than in many other science fiction stories. The dystopian future in the story and the concept of space travel cane be traced back William Gibson’s past experiences

William Gibson’s childhood was not easy as he lost his father early and then his mother as he turned 18 (Gibson). In his biography a saying refers to an orphan like Gibson as the lone survivor to a lost civilization. This meant that his experiences could greatly shift his views on life and the future unlike others. It also helped that he became interested in science fiction early on in life. Bruce Sterling acknowledges this by saying “...we owe a debt to those before us, those SF writers whose conviction, commitment, and talent enthralled us and, in truth changed our lives.” (Sterling XV) 
The first element that makes Red Star a Cyber Punk is Fear, a drug slipped into Colonel Korolev’s drink. This is not necessarily surprising as the space station Kosmograd is being used as a black market. The reason Fear is an important as factor in Cyber Punk is that drugs are technology. Timothy Leary said that LSD and computers were both technology and both had great potential (Sterling xiii). Often in Cyber Punk, technology violates the body with artificial limbs, chips in the skull, and even a mood organ. Therefore drugs which can alter our body’s chemistry are just as threatening, and they are varied and available right now. Korolev has been taken advantage of by technology in other ways as well.

I can find an easy comparison between Korolev and John R. Isidore from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. Both are isolated from society as the future of mankind is determined, but their positions are the exact opposite. Korolev went into space, which was supposedly the future, but now the whole plan is being abandoned and he cannot return to earth in his condition. Isidore however, cannot leave earth in his condition to join the rest of humanity in space. This is interesting because it shows how flawed mankind's solutions are to its dystopia. To stay on a dying planet is meaningless, but to enter space will also bring about consequences.

The condition of earth is never fully addressed in this story. This is a strange choice as Gibson’s hope for the future is that “That we’ll turn out not to have already terminally soiled our unthinkably rare and lovely little sphere of water and air”(Interview). All we know is that the countries in our time seem to remain unchanged except for the U.S.S.R. superiority of the United States. The predictions for the future of the U.S.S.R. still seem realistic however, as the KGB is harassing innocent people, and the citizens in space are defecting. The United States seems to be going through an energy crisis related to oil which is frighteningly similar to the current condition of the United States. Red Orbit feels like the most realistic future story I have heard. Technology feels slightly more advanced, but little has changed, and the fact that he setting is similar to our current state is very impressive. In fact Gibson feels that the current state of the world feels just like a science fiction scenario (Interview).

Red Orbit is Cyber Punk, but it feels very different from many other stories of the genre. Man’s dystopia is explored in space rather than on the surface of a decimated earth. The technology of this time is not the main focus; it is mostly about Korolev’s struggle with his own state. The plan for mankind to move to space may not be completely ended in this story, but the failure of Kosmograd does not give much confidence in it. It is a story that shows how mankind’s dystopia goes with them where ever they go. After all if earth can become devastated by man than it can happen in space and on other planets as well. Still the arrival of Americans in the end provides some hope. They represent how man will always seek to survive and strive for a better life. Also Korolev is not alone, as unlike Isidore he has companions in the end.  

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Blade Runner: The Major Points

The film Blade Runner possesses the necessary elements to be considered in the same world as Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. Some important aspects fall by the way side, such as the Mercerism, the importance of man’s empathy towards animals, Phil Resh’s place in an andy police station, and Deckard questioning if he has any empathy towards andys. What remains is the question of mortality in replicants, the degrading state of humanity on Earth, and of course the question of Deckard’s humanity. 

In the book Roy Batty cared greatly about his survival, but it was against humans that he worried. It is the four year life limit which he fears in Blade Runner. Either way his death is related to that which he fears. In the book he dies at the hands of a human, and in the movie his death comes at the end of his four years of life. As he kills anyone who stands in his path the audience may feel anger towards his actions. However, “Our understanding of his cruelty changes as we come to understand it as a human reaction to his existential situation.” (Retrofitting) Roy was searching for immortality, a trait that would make him less human, and yet by sparing Deckard’s life, he became more human than perhaps any other replicant.  

Though apparently different, the plight of humanity in Blade Runner is just as bad as it is in Electric Sheep. Little explanation is given, but it is clear that real animals are a rare occurrence in Blade Runner. Humanity is fleeing to off world colonies while others such as Sebastian are left behind. The air never looks clean in Blade Runner and it is raining almost constantly, which I would assume is acidic or highly polluted. It a dreary depressing sight and “The gaudy neon pink and red evoke a reference to Hell.” (Jump Cut) If this dystopian future is Hell then it is one fully crafted by humans, this of course a main concept in Cyber Punk. The horrors of the future are our own creation as we rely on technology to our own end.  

The actions of the humans in Blade Runner often seem selfish. The Tyrell Corporation created beings with a limited life span for slave labor. Then when a small group of replicants escapes they are hunted down like animals and destroyed. There are many religious undertones in Blade Runner. The scene where Roy kills Tyrell, Tyrell can symbolize the death of God himself. (Atlantis Journal) He is referred to as the creator, and yet Tyrell is no God, at least not omnipotent. He can not give Roy any more life than he already has. 

Yet if Tyrell can even be considered God than Sebastian who is considered lower than a normal human is a highly selfless person. All he desires is companionship as can be seen from his living dolls. Though in all the versions I have seen Sebastian’s fate is never fully explained in Blade Runner. Though in one version it may be assumed that he too falls victim to Roy Batty. If this is the case than perhaps Roy’s image as a Christ figure is flawed as sinners and non-sinners alike die. Also if Roy is a representation of Christ in a truest form than Tyrell would be more appropriatly considered the devil or perhaps he represents both God and the devil in one.   

The final important factor in Blade Runner is the question of Deckard’s humanity. At least this detail is presented in the new Director’s version of Blade Runner (Ebert). Ebert argues "...that It looks fabulous, it uses special effects to create a new world of its own, but it is thin in its human story." I agree however, if you believe Deckard can be considered a replicant than perhaps the only human character we can sympathize with is Sebastian. Rachel asks Deckard if he has ever taken the empathy test himself. While in the book he replies with a yes, in Blade Runner he gives no reply leading the audience to question for the first time if he is a replicant. “The filmmaker also has expanded on the unicorn references, which he says ‘provoke Deckard's doubts in his own essence’” (Washington Post). Questioning the true identity of one’s self was presented in Electric sheep through the character Phil Resh. In Blade Runner however both Rachel and Deckard present this idea. Rachel is confirmed to be a replicants, and she struggles with this knowledge. However, it is through Rachel’s experience and the existence of false memories that cause Deckard to doubt himself. 

The ending to Electric Sheep was not happy, but Deckard’s life is still stable. He will receive a reward and continue living with his electric toad and his wife. All the end results to the Directors edition of Blade Runner are bleak for everyone. Even if Roy Batty finds redemption his kind will still die quickly. Deckard cannot live in piece as he questions his humanity and Rachael is now wanted. Lastly Tyrell is dead, and possibly the peaceful Sebastian as well. In this respect Blade Runner is far more dismal than its book counter part.