“… Look Dare, it’s probably time that we let you know … this isn’t just a party to celebrate your new position as the Chief Simulation Officer at MetaMate®. Honestly, we’re all happy for you and your family … about the massive amount of bread that you will be making as the chief architect for …of …well … of Wearing HeadMasks® for a Better Life ! … as so deftly displayed to everyone by their DroneCore® marketing team …well, everyone who was outside last night. For sure, their other lit up drone-choreographed phrase ‘Wearing your custom HeadMask® outside isn’t creepy anymore! It’s progress!’ … that’s something we’re all gonna have to chew on for a while, but the point is Darren; In actuality, we are really here to attempt to persuade you to take a non-virtual look at things as they stand.”
Phew! … let me slip off my artificial-life-helmut® to simply state that the incident stated above was a mere re-enactment…well no. I actually just made it up. In real terms (I mean REAL really terms. You know?). In those terms, I’m staging an intervention with myself … I suppose you could say I’m intervening about excessive jacking-in, while ensconced in a headset. (Now isn’t THAT a pretty image? “Could someone hand me a tissue?”)
No. That’s not it either.
I don’t actually even own a VR headset. (Does masturbating while wearing one cause blindness? Maybe something for another post…)
I really don’t think I judge someone as a wanker if they do. (own, that is)
Disclaimer: The first time I was on a plane (which travels 600mph and has windows no less); That is, the first time that I saw this passenger, right in front of me, strap his crisp new silver VR headset onto his technocratic (read: thirty-something) head, why I had more than a teensy urge to give ’em one of those head slaps where you also dislodge the headset and his little VR program. Kind of a gentle lateral head slap, wherein most of the impact comes from what you say right after that. It’s actually a little Clint Eastwood-y at that point.
“… Listen punk. I don’t care if you were just virtually banging Scarlett Johansson…but the fact is we’re all on this plane together … and if some sh*t goes down, I don’t want you sittin’ there twiddling your joystick … get it?…”
Alright. I’ll get to the point of why I’m staging this intervention for myself.
I fiddle with magical dopamine-producing web thingies. (spelled with an ‘f’, not ‘d’ [mostly]) and this javascript library called 3js pretty much is the source for VR splendor it appears. And it seems a helluva rabbit hole that we – as nerds at our desk … or as a society that may need to pull-up way quicker than we ever imagined – we may want to consider where ‘neato!’ becomes, “hey! how did all of our capacity to feed and shelter ourselves become toast!” (virtual rabbit hole. virtual bulldozer.)
(advertisement break : look for Schmidty’s new AI headset program: RV_VR! ‘Recreational vehicles have never been so easy! And look! A foxy hitchhiker up ahead … who bears a striking resemblance to ScarJo!”)
This has obviously gone off the virtual rails. About ten years ago, I felt the need to work a computer riff about what things looked like then. Google – in its “never evil” stance at the time – suggested that we might want to wear our computer on our face, ala Google Glass®. I thought that quite ludicrous so I made a thing on my computer to express myself.
It goes like this:
Island Notes 
That tool is a glasshole
If I knew how to comment a ba-doomp boomp 🥁 I surely would. Well-placed Anonymous-san!