Da Bomb

In case you never get to go over and check out Philip Linden's thinky blog, go see what he just refreshed with:

It isn't often that I come in touch with a subject as big as Second Life, but this is certainly an example.  Over the last 2 weeks, I've seen 'Dr. Atomic' 3 times, which is a new opera created by Peter Sellars and John Adams and showing at the San Francisco Opera...

Check out my post there, but before I wax further eloquent on things like the very first SL sim being called "Da Bomb" (heavy, huh??? and still in existence!) let me go way out on a limb, in the way I'm never afraid to do, and ask whether Philip could be among the first generation in his family -- maybe second? -- to be going to the opera. There's just something about this post that wants us to know that Philip Linden goes to the opera. Three times! Did you know your favourite gamo-techno-geek-dude went to the opera?!

I'm getting this sense I guess, as one whose own ancestors did stuff like hold down the parking lot booth in front of the Hotel Frontenac in Quebec City or manned the saloon on the wrong side of the tracks in Cory, PA. We're only really second-generation opera-goers although actually, I'm going to admit that the opera-going gene is skipping a generation when it comes to your humble correspondent despite at least one opera-directing relative. In New York, I see first-generation-college-educated going to, and suffering at, the opera all the time -- it's the new golf.

OK, Maybe Philip's ancestors had season's tickets to the grandest opera halls of Europe in their day, I dunno, or maybe they were lathe-operators which is why he went into physics and engineering. (actually I think he said at SLCC that he had many teachers in his family). Still, somehow, the idea that he thought to blog about this has some kind of...story behind it.

Now, to his main point! Philip Linden must think that Second Life is like the atomic bomb. That is, it's not as big an idea as the atomic bomb, he admits in his blog, but still pretty big! I'm going to leave aside all the stuff about Oppenheimer and communism and the Soviets because I kinda alluded to that already, but let's just try to think about what it means to sing to your creation, which is like an atomic bomb.

To look at real stories from Oppenheimer's life, there's the one from the interview shortly before his death:

Oppenheimer also recalled the words of the Hindu god Vishnu as that god was trying to compel an earthly leader to follow his dictates. To intimidate the human,Vishnu re-formed himself into the visage of a huge multi-armed writhing figure, enormously immense beyond the scale of simple human proportions.   "Now I am become Death", he told the human, "destroyer of worlds.".

The scary part about Philip's blog -- if you want to skip all that link jumping -- is this:

Could it be that the darkness of that first explosion suggests in the same breath the opposite:  that technology might also be able to save us?  I hope so.

So the first blogger in response says matter-of-factly, hey, why do we need saving? Then I ask -- but technology alone can't save us, the human heart is cruel. Which we knew already from seeing all the people who post on this blog, hmmm?

People who think technology can save us -- well, I don't know where to start with them. I had to battle one of them over on Terra Nova again today (scroll to the end). See, it works like this: 1) technology alone can save us; 2) geeks who run the technology then should rule the world. No thanks!

Well, rather than continue to cross-post myself, let me point out that Second Life is like nuclear fission in terms of its ability to rapidly replicate mind and cultural memes, many of them decidedly sub-optimal. This is where I think it gets really freaky and scary, and like with the RL atomic bombs, there ought to be more rules about where you test this stuff not only near vulnerable human beings like children and old people, but any of us.

What are the resuls of the Second Life revolutionary tool? Well, as I've noted:

o leveraging the middle-aged female capacity (due to employed husbands and part-time employment in the Wal-Mart economy) to good advantage as sexual playmates for the under- or not-yet employed high-school and college aged male -- any tool that can help leverage and economize the labour and cost of gaining the male orgasm will likely be revolutionary and financially successful.

o leveraging the developing world and second world labour for computer programming and graphic arts skills in real time for consumption by mainly Americans

o creation of a persistent, streaming, 3-D, dynamic simulated world where more and more people will spend their time and con themselves into thinking it will save them costs even on military training and prototyping, so that our enemies will be able to sneak in the country on tourist visas and use just basic stuff like box-cutters and the low-grade not-even-high-school equivalency education of airport checkers to take down buildings.

The guy who is quoted today in the Post as saying you can "take two zeros" off the cost of training might as well put two zeros out at desks as the names we should call his employees who are now about useless for real national defense which needs stuff like immersion in the real world of field ops and HUMINT.

I'm trying to picture a country with like even 20 percent of the population "goggled in," i.e. sitting in front of computer terminals 24/7, staring at a screen, with a game going in one window, SL in another, Yahoo Messenger in a third, spread-sheets from work in a 4th, endlessly mouse-clicking, with say, 5-7 percent of them masturbating at any given moment LOL. Is this going to be a country that's easy to take over lol? Well, these are my dark thoughts about it this Halloween Eve...

Sky rockets in flight/afternoon delight...

Comments

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

Hmm, do I notice a Luddite streak there...? Well, no, technology won't "save the world", but hopefully human beings using technology will. If they wish to do so.

I slightly fail to understand the relation this has with opera, though.

Sorry, I'm in a bad mood today and more grumpier than usual :)

[Cubey]

Minor point: the sim is named "Da Boom", not the "Da Bomb", and like most of the original sims, it's named after an alley near the old Linden Lab building.

[Prokofy Neva]

Cubey, I deliberately called it by something similar sounding to make a point. Um, Doesn't "Da Boom" strike you as being what "Da Bomb" is all about anyway?

What happens in that alley way?

No,it's not Ludditism, Gwyn, to question technology even as you use it, geez. And they don't say "humans using technology" -- which is why I added that corrective.

What does it have to do with opera? Well, there was an opera about the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer, father of the American bomb, which Philip saw, go read his blog.