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The Virtual Authority  In
the Cold Frontier mythos (or as we call it, the Takagi &
Fishverse), Virtual Technology is the ultimate form of communication.
It is an entire alternative reality dedicated to communication; a place
where teleportation and the means of instantly locating any sought
person, commodity, or information are not only possible but the
norm.
Such a tool gives mankind abilities beyond the
potential afforded by the designs of nature alone. A
full-sensory internet, where the sightless can see, where the paralysed
can fly, a realm where an individual can lose enself in the collective
conscious by-product of its entire species, and know at will or whim
anything that any similarly connected member of its species has ever
learned before.
It’s obviously many other things as well as
all that. The perfect advertising medium is one example. And although
the benefits to mankind are rivalled by precious little else, like any
tool it can be used for malignant intent. It can be used for
delivering evil unto individual and unto species.
The
below passage is a standalone fiction work which struck me as epiphany
and manifested as text. From it I’ve tried to craft something that
gives insight into the mind responsible for the greatest communication
tool ever afforded to mankind; a revelatory recounting of his life’s
work delivered by the inventor of virtua himself. It is a story of
inception recounted by an old man humbled by his own achievement.
It’s just as well the guy likes to talk. Here is what he has to say...
Memoirs of a Pioneer "The
Internet is a universe of information. It is a huge space. The
terminals of the past were the windows through which we could see and
interact with that world. And the screens that were our eyes to that
space were, in the normal human fashion, rectangular.
I
wanted something more immersive. I wanted to experience the internet
for what it is; a spacious world where information exists instead
of matter.
For inspiration I looked at the windows in my
house. I never had opacity-controlled walls when I was growing up, so
we had these panes of glass in our walls that were permanently
translucent. You look through it and obviously what you see is a framed
picture of the world outside. You move, the picture moves. You stick
your head out and you can see a lot more. I was always interested in
seeing a lot more.
The gaming industry was always a
pioneer of immersive technologies, and one that was and still is driven
by a need for virtual technology. Domed helmets let you see in all
directions. Holographic displays brought things into three dimensions.
But even they were still a barrier, still windows through which we looked
at that alternate world. I wanted to actually get in there. I wanted to
break the barrier down once and for all and actually, physically, be in that space. Existing virtual technology couldn't quite do that for me.
The
idea of an alternate reality is an old one, but it had direct practical
applications for what I wanted to do. I started small. My workroom, a
small bedroom with my work and personal terminals on it, a chair, and a
few other things. I mapped the space using 3D modelling technology
that’s existed for longer than I’ve been alive. I made a virtual copy
of the room. That was nothing new. Film makers have been doing that for
years.
I could see it on my terminal screen, a crude virtual
copy of my physical space. I needed a way to fix it overtop of the
physical world, assign it a physical anchor so that it wouldn’t’ move,
so it was there in space, forever.
What better way than by
satellite? The drawing pins on the canvas of our world. At first I used
store-bought GPS, hacked them into what I needed them to do, and built
a simple software that said “this room map fits here on the GPS”.
Making GPS three-dimensional is something I didn’t bother with, nor the
exact rotation and placement of the virtual object. I would've liked
to, but the tools didn’t exist then. My concern was putting my virtual
model where it corresponded with the physical counterpart, and keeping
it there.
Eventually I did it. It wasn’t very impressive,
and I very nearly lost interest. But I wasn't done yet. The next step
was to recreate the entire world, and scope-proof it for the entire
universe. I had no way of mapping such huge areas with my 3D modelling
software, so I started a blog online tracking my project, just working
away at what I could map. I
guess I hoped that other people would take an interest and volunteer to
help. And I kept at it, building my “Virtual Realm” little by
little. I went around my house, mapped it, assigned it. I got as far as
the end of my street before I got any interest from a financial backer.
I won’t name the company here, but suffice to say they gave me my big
break.
With corporate funding and direction the project took
off. I was assigned employees, relocated to their office in what was
then Manhattan, and I’ve been going at it ever since. At first our
project was just to map the world. The company would then build game
software to be used in the environment we’d mapped, build terrain, all
that stuff. It was supposed to be just a big playground, a novelty for
the gaming industry. They had no interest in 3D modeling the entire
world like I had started doing, because they would create their own
terrain anyway. They just wanted the virtual map there, so we put it there.
The
company built these visors, similar to what mainliners use today, so
that people could see the world we had made. We had a truly huge
variety of peripherals, from your basic hand-held to your full body
sensory suit.
Giving the internet an anchor in our real
world gave it the substance I wanted for it, gave us a way of
experiencing information in its own environment. The internet and the
environment we’d built for it where still largely separate, since our
company owned the environment which caused issues for data sharing, and
hosting, and so forth. Because you can own all the real estate you
want, but no one owns the internet. I never told anyone this, but I
always thought the merging was inevitable. I wasn’t concerned about
that. I had other things in my mind.
The visors we’d built
were amazing at the time, but they were still just a new type of
window. I wasn’t satisfied to leave it there. I wanted total immersion.
So
then I looked at the brain. It’s a very simple thing these days, now
that you can have it mapped or designed before you’re born, or
surgically altered. Back then, though, neuro-science was still a young
field, and I had to learn it basically from scratch. I studied for
years until I had the qualifications I needed to continue my work. All
that work just to know what I was up against... that was the hardest
part of it all.
The reason I stuck with it is that it’s
the interface between the brain and vision that is the key to human
perception. And therefore it was the key to the doors I wanted to open:
the ability to truly look upon the world in its virtual form, and the
means to interact with that world directly, without reliance on a proxy.
It
took me, with sponsorship from a group of high-profile cybernetics
organisations, a good twelve years to make any headway at all. But
eventually science progressed and we had what we needed. Don’t let
anyone tell you we did it all ourselves. Much of the technology we used
was developed by third parties. And we built a neurochip, the first of
its kind, that eliminated the need for both the visor and the
peripheral. We’d created true virtua; a window within the brain.
Actual
use of the chip was adopted more slowly than we’d expected. Looking
back now, that’s not surprising, since microchips in the brain were
pretty dodgy at that time. But we’d made a more-or-less quality
product, and the more people used it the more uses for that product
were discovered. The company that owned the environment I’d initially
built had expanded it, done a really good job of keeping it advancing.
I remember when they mapped the moon, how excited people were to
actually be able to send their avatars there and explore.
Eventually
the virtual realm merged with the internet itself through sheer
consumer use, just as I’d always known it would. That part wasn’t
actually my doing, although it was
my ultimate goal to make a vessel for the internet. That was
thanks to the users, anyone anywhere with virtua access, who liked it
enough to use it.
And now, of course, that little project I
started in my bedroom is the biggest communication network in the
history of mankind, and it’s growing bigger by the day.
I’m glad I lived to see it reach its full potential. Heck, who knows, maybe it hasn't yet?”
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"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity." - Albert Einstein
~Sir Pencilot
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