From: eliot@phoenix.princeton.edu (Eliot Handelman)
Subject: Re: 2ndCyberspace Conference
Date: 22 May 91 01:06:38 GMT
Organization: Cognitive Science Lab, Princeton U.



In article <1991May20.090324.9906@milton.u.washington.edu> williamb@milton.u.washington.edu (William Bricken) writes:
;
;
;
;Damn it, Cyberspace *is* a technical subject.  No one should have to
;apologize for sharing the technical details, that is what conferences
;are all about.  

Damn it, how soon we forget. Cyberspace *is* Gibson's metaphor for the
universe of communication. The technical implementation of cyberspace,
if you mean the neurotechnical interface, is potentially eons away,
and the technical implementation of virtual reality is hardly in
the same league as the much greater question, what to do with the
damned thing. And that is not so much a "technical" issue as a problem
of extending the imagination, inventing new strictures of information
and experience that go beyond our presently impoverished concepts of
the nature of any reality at all. The "hand in your face" concept of
virtual reality is, after all, just one of many possible ways of
enclosing a subject in a computer-generated universe, and probably
not one of the more interesting ways.