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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Perhaps some of you virtual reality hipsters have some ideas.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Many if not most US metropolitan areas are interspersed with huge warehouses that gradually became more empty as most American manufacturing was exported to China. Enormous Chinese container ships became de facto warehouses, as we perfected just-in-time delivery to our big-box stores. These empty warehouses create a new opportunity for fun and profit. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>We also saw an important transition as data storage went way more compact. Engineering offices once needed a drawing board, several filing cabinets, some means of cataloging the filing cabinets, often a big wooden card catalog like we used to see in the public library in our misspent youth (remember those things?), a big locking wooden desk if you were a bigshot or a smaller metal desk otherwise. All this stuff took a lot of space. But now your computer is your drawing board, your filing cabinets, your card catalog, your calendar, your secretary, your draftsman, and a desk isn’t really necessary if your computer weighs 2 kg. After we mostly went paperless in the early 00s, we got rid of that bulky junk and the excess employees, so we easily fit four engineers into the office space that once held one. This allowed Lockheeed Sunnyvale to sell of most of its really valuable real estate to the local internet fly-by-nights. That’s why it is now about a fifth the area it was 20 yrs ago. This transition must have happened elsewhere as well, vacating so many enormous office buildings.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Now we have all these unused warehouses and empty office buildings in metro areas which no one knows how to employ. They really are everywhere, and they are not difficult to spot. We call them see-throughs, because you drive by on the freeway, see a huge office building and everything behind it. Many of the warehouses have no cars parked anywhere near them, so they must be empty as well.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Here’s the idea: we use google glass to create something like a meat-world quasi-real version of the virtual reality game Second Life. We could use VR hoods or goggles to dress up a big empty room as whatever the participant likes best, as they walk around in a climate-controlled environment. It can be a field of flowers for instance, or a Mario Brothers world with chompy plants and Yoshis running about, or perhaps a big virtual Disneyland for the younger set. The players could perceive a garden of Eden as they walk around observing delights such as the tree of life, serpents offering fruit, nekkid Eves and so forth. Oh that would be so trippy.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Big multi-floor office buildings could be arranged so that floors have common themes and interacting players. If other office buildings are like the ones I know, the periphery of each floor are private offices with a door, what we used to call four-walls and a lid which you could aspire to inhabit, these always reserved for the big shots and higher ranking players. These could be converted into rooms for copulation for those players who successfully negotiate that particular interaction.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Oh my, there is money to be made here, waaaay big money.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>spike<o:p></o:p></p></div></body></html>