[extropy-chat] a message for spike66 from thespike

[Brian Shores]

Antique motorbike ehh??Hahaa excellent! :: flashes back to Zen & the Art
of Motorcycle Maintenance::

Are you going to have any pictures from your trip anyplace??

Love the idea of your "portable meme transmitter"! I have an older Treo
90, though, I'm not sure if it has an expansion card for an mp3 player,
but I have been thinking about biting the bullet and just getting an
iPod or something I think we would all agree that some things just can't
be effectively communicated without the suttleness of human expression.


Perhaps on a separate note, although along the same lines of thought, I
have been exploring a VR world as of late called Second Life
(www.secondlife.com). I'm not sure how many of you have been to it yet,
but I must say that the potential of this program (above all others I
have tried) has the potential to really emulate the nuances of human
communication in a purely digital simulacrum (IE the Metaverse!). 

SL supports a custom "C++" like scripting language called LSL. With it
you can do any number of typical OO programming things in addition to
directly controlling the 3D environment. The language can be programmed
to affect or BE affected by all parts of the world interface, including
gravity, object collisions, and all kinds of movement behaviors. With
the introduction of version 1.4, they now support Poser animation files!

Well, combine this with the ability to upload music/wav files, pull in
streaming audio from the web, uploading image/textures right from your
HD, and eventually the addition streaming voicechat and possibly even
voice synched avatar facial movements, and you have a system that will
be able to more accurately "render" (pardon the pun) the complexity of
human emotions in communication. This of course, depends largely on the
skill level and technical expertise as well as the artistic vision to
make something so beautiful as human thought into an equally stunning
avatar. And then of course there's the hardware side of things. But
basically, I believe that Life is an Equation, and that the more
precicely we can model things, the closer to understanding that Equation
we will be. Quantum computing will help to bring this about, and having
a full 100% digital simulacrum would be awesome, but the word "digital"
will have to take on new meaning and terminologies. Anyways I am
rambling, maybe this should be shifted to its own thread ehh??

Peace and Happy Building,

Artillo

-----Original Message-----
From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
[mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Spike
Sent: Sunday, August 08, 2004 1:30 AM
To: 'ExI chat list'; 'Damien Broderick'
Subject: RE: [extropy-chat] a message for spike66 from thespike


> Apologies for the stolen bandwidth folks. Just tried to e Spike Jones
> offlist, got a `mailbox full' bounce. Is the spam choking you, pal?
> 
> Damien

Oops sorry about that Damien.  I was on a two week vacation, 
riding all over the northwestern US on an antique motorcycle which I
restored this past spring.  Total distance on the 
bike about 5 megameters on the bike, ~140 km on foot.

Hiked, backpacked and camped all over Mount Rainier.
I rigged a platform on the back of the bike to haul the 
backpacks and camping gear, worked great.  Had a great 
time, no major pieces fell off of the bike.  It was a 
*most* excellent adventure.

But yes, I am choking on spam, oy vey, and Im
missing some very important personal email. 
While I was out backpacking and riding, I had
some wonderful ideas to post.  I will start
with this one: we should explore the notion
of using the spoken word to spread extropian
memes, not just in conferences but rather to
create MP3 files which can be carried in one's
palm pilot or equivalent.  It occurred to me
that the spoken word conveys nuances that are
lost in the electronic post.  

I will develop this idea further after I 
clean up my bike and camping gear. 

spike

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