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watching a virtual persona stream their development of their M1 GPU drivers is one of the most cyberpunk things I've ever seen! it's easy to forget that this wo

watching a virtual persona stream their development of their M1 GPU drivers is one of the most cyberpunk things I've ever seen! it's easy to forget that this world is looking closer and closer to those dreamed up by Gibson, Stephenson, etc. what a time to be alive.

Mistletoe 4y ago
I like your optimism, but it seems more like a Phillip K. Dick novel to me. >In 2021, society is driven by a virtual Internet, which has created a degenerate effect called "nerve attenuation syndrome" or NAS. Megacorporations control much of the world, intensifying the class hostility already created by NAS. from Johnny Mnemonic What can we do to make it more utopian?
- masklinn 4y ago
  > I like your optimism, but it seems more like a Phillip K. Dick novel to me. Is it? It's basically forums & avatars brought in the medium of audio and video communication.
  - extrememacaroni 4y ago
    That's probably what everyone would say if they didn't read books. But some read books so... OMG CYBERPUNK DYSTOPIA PHILIP K DICK
- mattnewton 4y ago
  Small nit but I was confused, I think Johnny Mnemonic is Gibbson? And I had to look up NAS, I think that part of the movie not the book. I think we have another couple decades before androids and mood organs of Phillip K dick at least but I could be wrong. But parts of Gibbsonian cyberpunk is already here!
  - Smoosh 4y ago
    > already here Just unevenly distributed.
  - Mistletoe 4y ago
    You are so right. Bizarre. I thought that was Phillip K. Dick for all of my life I think. Even worse because Johnny Mnemonic is one of my favorite movies! I’ve got the Black Shakes worse than I thought.
    - dwringer 4y ago
      I was shocked to read this comment because I interpreted your original comment as meaning a Philip K Dick novel would be optimistic compared to the cyberpunk dystopia in which we find ourselves now. lol Anyway it's pretty fair to confuse the two I think, there can't be any way Johnny Mnemonic wasn't influenced by Blade Runner (I'm guessing it's true of both the movies and of the books). Very similar themes and protagonists at a certain level of abstraction.
      - ethbr0 4y ago
        Johnny Mnemonic was dead tree published in 1981. (I have the issue of OMNI) Blade Runner, the movie, was released in 1982. And PKD's DADoES was published in 1968. Honestly, IMHO, Blade Runner in movie form shares more DNA with Alien than proto-cyberpunk. They're both character studies rather than world-building exercises, albeit with massive credit to Ridley Scott and the design team that their "background" world is more lifelike than many world-centric films. But Blade Runner fundamentally lacks the multi-level cutthroat competitive aspect of cyberpunk. Oddly enough, a quirk that frequently recurs in British scifi, in contrast to the more free market American themes.
        olddustytrail 4y ago
        Well, Blade Runner and Alien are set in the same universe.
      - vl 4y ago
        I’m watching The Peripheral, which seems to be influenced by Ready Player One. Which is ironical, since Gibson is a granddaddy of Ready Player One.
- babypuncher 4y ago
  Aesthetically it looks like the worlds imagined in a Phillip K. Dick novel, but none of the actual dystopian aspects are present in what GP described (rampant poverty/class disparity, environmental destruction, etc.) I don't think someone sharing their craft through a virtual avatar is any more responsible for these things than the flying cars from Blade Runner would be.
- abudabi123 4y ago
  > What can we do to make it more utopian? A polity with an outmost shell of no bs ic spooks in a ratio of twenty to one cybersec defense to offense. There is the problem of sciengineers conceiving in the labs photonic computing but the committee member wage/salary slave cuts cost corners (or not but bloats up on unnecessary complexity) and we get the worsest join on the venn diagram in the industry spec.
  - aftbit 4y ago
    I feel like this is insightful but also I do not understand what you are saying. Can you perhaps elucidate?
- kevingadd 4y ago
  It's an interesting set of tradeoffs - vtubing has made it possible for people to be on-screen personalities who normally would not able to as easily because it can be very hard to overcome problems with your IRL appearance. That stuff really matters if you want to succeed on YouTube or Twitch. In comparison if you want to be a vtuber, there are relatively affordable ways to grab a stock model and customize it. You can also just commission a custom one from an artist and rigger - though I think the cost of that is sadly out of reach of an amateur it's not as high as you might assume. If you stream without a face camera at all it generally hurts your ability to grow an audience, and unfortunately our society is still pretty focused on appearance so if you don't look great you're going to potentially get a lot of toxicity in your chat. A vtuber avatar acts as an equalizer in this sense and also lets people express their personality and aesthetics visually in a way that might not otherwise be easy - they can pick eye and hair colors they think represent them without having to use colored contacts or hair dyes, etc. A few different people I know found that having a vtuber avatar made it much easier for them to get into streaming regularly and it did grow their audience, so I'm happy to see the technology catch on and improve.
  - astrange 4y ago
    > It's an interesting set of tradeoffs - vtubing has made it possible for people to be on-screen personalities who normally would not able to as easily because it can be very hard to overcome problems with your IRL appearance. That's not the reason most of the popular ones do it. (Ironmouse, sure, but not anyone else.) Most of the bigger ones are corporate characters, so they're actually forced to hide themselves and it's more like they're uncredited actors. Besides that, it gives you privacy, avoids stalkers, means you don't have to do your makeup or get dressed (up or at all), things like that. Appearance still definitely matters though, but now it's your voice carrying you and not your face.
- Razengan 4y ago
  > What can we do to make it more utopian? Move to Mars and start over.
  - Mistletoe 4y ago
    Not falling for it! I’ve seen Total Recall! Based on an actual Phillip K. Dick story. I have no hope that would work or is what Elon wants. I know he wants to set up the world’s most exclusive gated community there.
segmondy 4y ago
Which is what Zuck is trying to get us all into with the Meta, but the world is not ready yet.
- philistine 4y ago
  Don't forget to dissociate the concept of virtual worlds which already exist and are quite popular (MMOs etc.), and the idea of a virtual world owned and imagined by Zuckerberg which has been a terrible failure so far.
  - cjsawyer 4y ago
    The opinions around facebook’s metaverse are hilarious when things like Second Life, WoW, EVE, VR Chat, and even Roblox have been so massively popular yet unrecognized for what they are.
    - jotm 4y ago
      Everyone just pretends there wasn't a time when people were spending years of their life in an MMO. That was ruined by games trying to appeal to more mainstream people (with less hardcore Features like losing all your possessions upon death) and the micromonetization strategies that everyone hates. I wonder if VR will even have games like early Everquest, WoW, EVE, etc but in VR.
    - segmondy 4y ago
      The difference between Facebooks Meta and other worlds is the difference between getting a billion+ people into the same virtual world. How big is Second Life? or Roblox?
      - RhodesianHunter 4y ago
        I don't think you can call that a difference until metaverse starts actually hitting those numbers, or even surpassing the existing worlds.
Aaargh20318 4y ago
> watching a virtual persona stream their development of their M1 GPU drivers is one of the most cyberpunk things I've ever seen! What would really push it into cyberpunk territory is if it turns out this is not an actual human but an AI-controlled virtual person.
- lazide 4y ago
  Which is using this to seed memetic triggers that will allow it to take control invisibly later. Damn, I hope someone gets this into a script soon.
- ngcc_hk 4y ago
  Is she not real? :-o
anxiously 4y ago
Can someone explain this vtoon trend to me? It doesn't seem to be driven by anonymity because their real name is easily findable, so I assume it's something else? It seems very common, especially in certain communities.
- realjhol 4y ago
  - IntelMiner 4y ago
    Very well articulated comment from someone with highlights such as "you write for the Gaurdian and relentlessly spout feminist propaganda" "destruction that activist hooligans created in Portland" "Neurodiverse isn't a real medical term" Sounds like you've got a very particular axe to grind from a very particularly narrow world view. I hope one day you learn to enjoy your fellow human beings for who they are
- gburdell3 4y ago
  Some people just prefer their public persona to be in the form of an avatar instead of their real face. They want to have something there to represent themselves instead of just streaming a screen and nothing else, but they would rather that representation be an avatar or character rather than their physical selves.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - astrange 4y ago
    Also Japanese viewers like this better, and you don’t have to look good, and if you’re streaming from inside a soundproof box in summer without AC then you don’t even have to wear clothes.
  - maegul 4y ago
    Personally, I like the idea. IMO, we lost something when it became normal/expected to link our real-life self to our internet selves. We arguable gained some unpleasant things too (thinking of Facebook here). A persistent avatar/alias as an internet persona seems to match the real-life to internet-life relationship better. IE, for many, they’re different and rather separable aspects of life.

Mistletoe 4y ago

I like your optimism, but it seems more like a Phillip K. Dick novel to me. >In 2021, society is driven by a virtual Internet, which has created a degenerate effect called "nerve attenuation syndrome" or NAS. Megacorporations control much of the world, intensifying the class hostility already created by NAS. from Johnny Mnemonic What can we do to make it more utopian?

masklinn 4y ago
> I like your optimism, but it seems more like a Phillip K. Dick novel to me. Is it? It's basically forums & avatars brought in the medium of audio and video communication.
- extrememacaroni 4y ago
  That's probably what everyone would say if they didn't read books. But some read books so... OMG CYBERPUNK DYSTOPIA PHILIP K DICK
mattnewton 4y ago
Small nit but I was confused, I think Johnny Mnemonic is Gibbson? And I had to look up NAS, I think that part of the movie not the book. I think we have another couple decades before androids and mood organs of Phillip K dick at least but I could be wrong. But parts of Gibbsonian cyberpunk is already here!
- Smoosh 4y ago
  > already here Just unevenly distributed.
- Mistletoe 4y ago
  You are so right. Bizarre. I thought that was Phillip K. Dick for all of my life I think. Even worse because Johnny Mnemonic is one of my favorite movies! I’ve got the Black Shakes worse than I thought.
  - dwringer 4y ago
    I was shocked to read this comment because I interpreted your original comment as meaning a Philip K Dick novel would be optimistic compared to the cyberpunk dystopia in which we find ourselves now. lol Anyway it's pretty fair to confuse the two I think, there can't be any way Johnny Mnemonic wasn't influenced by Blade Runner (I'm guessing it's true of both the movies and of the books). Very similar themes and protagonists at a certain level of abstraction.
    - ethbr0 4y ago
      Johnny Mnemonic was dead tree published in 1981. (I have the issue of OMNI) Blade Runner, the movie, was released in 1982. And PKD's DADoES was published in 1968. Honestly, IMHO, Blade Runner in movie form shares more DNA with Alien than proto-cyberpunk. They're both character studies rather than world-building exercises, albeit with massive credit to Ridley Scott and the design team that their "background" world is more lifelike than many world-centric films. But Blade Runner fundamentally lacks the multi-level cutthroat competitive aspect of cyberpunk. Oddly enough, a quirk that frequently recurs in British scifi, in contrast to the more free market American themes.
      - olddustytrail 4y ago
        Well, Blade Runner and Alien are set in the same universe.
    - vl 4y ago
      I’m watching The Peripheral, which seems to be influenced by Ready Player One. Which is ironical, since Gibson is a granddaddy of Ready Player One.
babypuncher 4y ago
Aesthetically it looks like the worlds imagined in a Phillip K. Dick novel, but none of the actual dystopian aspects are present in what GP described (rampant poverty/class disparity, environmental destruction, etc.) I don't think someone sharing their craft through a virtual avatar is any more responsible for these things than the flying cars from Blade Runner would be.
abudabi123 4y ago
> What can we do to make it more utopian? A polity with an outmost shell of no bs ic spooks in a ratio of twenty to one cybersec defense to offense. There is the problem of sciengineers conceiving in the labs photonic computing but the committee member wage/salary slave cuts cost corners (or not but bloats up on unnecessary complexity) and we get the worsest join on the venn diagram in the industry spec.
- aftbit 4y ago
  I feel like this is insightful but also I do not understand what you are saying. Can you perhaps elucidate?
kevingadd 4y ago
It's an interesting set of tradeoffs - vtubing has made it possible for people to be on-screen personalities who normally would not able to as easily because it can be very hard to overcome problems with your IRL appearance. That stuff really matters if you want to succeed on YouTube or Twitch. In comparison if you want to be a vtuber, there are relatively affordable ways to grab a stock model and customize it. You can also just commission a custom one from an artist and rigger - though I think the cost of that is sadly out of reach of an amateur it's not as high as you might assume. If you stream without a face camera at all it generally hurts your ability to grow an audience, and unfortunately our society is still pretty focused on appearance so if you don't look great you're going to potentially get a lot of toxicity in your chat. A vtuber avatar acts as an equalizer in this sense and also lets people express their personality and aesthetics visually in a way that might not otherwise be easy - they can pick eye and hair colors they think represent them without having to use colored contacts or hair dyes, etc. A few different people I know found that having a vtuber avatar made it much easier for them to get into streaming regularly and it did grow their audience, so I'm happy to see the technology catch on and improve.
- astrange 4y ago
  > It's an interesting set of tradeoffs - vtubing has made it possible for people to be on-screen personalities who normally would not able to as easily because it can be very hard to overcome problems with your IRL appearance. That's not the reason most of the popular ones do it. (Ironmouse, sure, but not anyone else.) Most of the bigger ones are corporate characters, so they're actually forced to hide themselves and it's more like they're uncredited actors. Besides that, it gives you privacy, avoids stalkers, means you don't have to do your makeup or get dressed (up or at all), things like that. Appearance still definitely matters though, but now it's your voice carrying you and not your face.
Razengan 4y ago
> What can we do to make it more utopian? Move to Mars and start over.
- Mistletoe 4y ago
  Not falling for it! I’ve seen Total Recall! Based on an actual Phillip K. Dick story. I have no hope that would work or is what Elon wants. I know he wants to set up the world’s most exclusive gated community there.

segmondy 4y ago

Which is what Zuck is trying to get us all into with the Meta, but the world is not ready yet.

philistine 4y ago
Don't forget to dissociate the concept of virtual worlds which already exist and are quite popular (MMOs etc.), and the idea of a virtual world owned and imagined by Zuckerberg which has been a terrible failure so far.
- cjsawyer 4y ago
  The opinions around facebook’s metaverse are hilarious when things like Second Life, WoW, EVE, VR Chat, and even Roblox have been so massively popular yet unrecognized for what they are.
  - jotm 4y ago
    Everyone just pretends there wasn't a time when people were spending years of their life in an MMO. That was ruined by games trying to appeal to more mainstream people (with less hardcore Features like losing all your possessions upon death) and the micromonetization strategies that everyone hates. I wonder if VR will even have games like early Everquest, WoW, EVE, etc but in VR.
  - segmondy 4y ago
    The difference between Facebooks Meta and other worlds is the difference between getting a billion+ people into the same virtual world. How big is Second Life? or Roblox?
    - RhodesianHunter 4y ago
      I don't think you can call that a difference until metaverse starts actually hitting those numbers, or even surpassing the existing worlds.

Aaargh20318 4y ago

> watching a virtual persona stream their development of their M1 GPU drivers is one of the most cyberpunk things I've ever seen! What would really push it into cyberpunk territory is if it turns out this is not an actual human but an AI-controlled virtual person.

lazide 4y ago
Which is using this to seed memetic triggers that will allow it to take control invisibly later. Damn, I hope someone gets this into a script soon.
ngcc_hk 4y ago
Is she not real? :-o

anxiously 4y ago

Can someone explain this vtoon trend to me? It doesn't seem to be driven by anonymity because their real name is easily findable, so I assume it's something else? It seems very common, especially in certain communities.

realjhol 4y ago
- IntelMiner 4y ago
  Very well articulated comment from someone with highlights such as "you write for the Gaurdian and relentlessly spout feminist propaganda" "destruction that activist hooligans created in Portland" "Neurodiverse isn't a real medical term" Sounds like you've got a very particular axe to grind from a very particularly narrow world view. I hope one day you learn to enjoy your fellow human beings for who they are
gburdell3 4y ago
Some people just prefer their public persona to be in the form of an avatar instead of their real face. They want to have something there to represent themselves instead of just streaming a screen and nothing else, but they would rather that representation be an avatar or character rather than their physical selves.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- astrange 4y ago
  Also Japanese viewers like this better, and you don’t have to look good, and if you’re streaming from inside a soundproof box in summer without AC then you don’t even have to wear clothes.
- maegul 4y ago
  Personally, I like the idea. IMO, we lost something when it became normal/expected to link our real-life self to our internet selves. We arguable gained some unpleasant things too (thinking of Facebook here). A persistent avatar/alias as an internet persona seems to match the real-life to internet-life relationship better. IE, for many, they’re different and rather separable aspects of life.