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Welcome to Weimerica Weekly Episode 22. The podcast airs every Wednesday.
This week’s podcast is on how virtual reality will shape the decline.
Weimerica Weekly is a podcast hosted by Ryan Landry that touches on the cultural, political and sexual topics that fill the mindspace of our United States of Weimerica. The politicization of all cultural and social degeneracy is examined with a focus on how it fits together.
Weimerica Weekly is produced by the Hestia Society and distributed by Social Matter.
Related Show Links:
Kevin Kelly’s essay on VR and focus on Magic Leap.
A Mashable writer experiences VR porn.
GoPro enters VR video sharing and recording.
Thanks to G.W. Rees for the introduction and outro music. G.W. Rees’ music can be found here on Soundcloud, Youtube, Facebook, Flickr and Instagram.
Sponsorship:
If you are interested in sponsoring Weimerica Weekly, e-mail Ryan Landry at Mrossi34228 at gmail dot com. Sponsorships start at $10 an episode, and all proceeds will either go back into the podcast or provide some compensation for your most grateful host.
Weimerica Weekly
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My initial response is that I’m not as worried about this as you are. Just as anyone who actually lives in Hollywood will scoff at notions of the “glamor of show business”, so too, as someone who lives in Silicon Valley, I scoff at the “magic of technology”. People forget that the “tech industry” has really only ever had a handful of genuine hits, hardware-wise. Enormous hits, obviously, but still only a handful. From a consumer perspective, these are:
The PC (laptop and desktop, including Mac)*
The video game console (home and handheld)
The smartphone
Everything else has been a niche, a fad, or an outright flop. The problem is that the enormous nature of the successes obscures the large numbers of failures for most people. Most prominent among the failures these days is the post-iPhone search for “the next big thing”. First it was going to be 3D everything, then voice control, then Google Glass-style wearables, then Kinect-style motion control, then smartwatches… all of which ended up as niches, fads, or flops. Now we have VR. Maybe this one really *will* be “the next big thing”. But just as likely, it’ll end up on the “niche, fad, or flop” pile, right along with Google Glass and the Apple Watch.
I’m not saying that VR won’t end up being a thing. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t. But I’m not too worried about it quite *yet*.
(*It is worth noting that even the venerable PC seem to be headed for “niche” status as the big-screen smartphone becomes the computer of choice for most people. I’ll note, for example, that home broadband subscriptions have just gone down for the first time ever, as more people turn to smartphones as their only computer. Increasingly, a PC will be thought of as something that sits on your desk at work, while fewer and fewer people will feel the need to own one personally.)
On the other hand, there’s this: Cracker Jack has just abandoned putting real toys in its boxes of candy in favor of including a card that you can scan with your smartphone, which leads to an “augmented reality mobile experience” instead.
What’s the world coming to?
http://www.engadget.com/2016/04/27/rip-cracker-jack-toys/
VR is more akin to a display device than a stand-alone technology.
The worrying aspect is that it has the potential (in fact almost surely is) the next giant leap forward in wireheading. Now wireheading, qua wireheading, has been around since the first time one of our savannah-dwelling ancestors jacked off while watching one of his pals doing a particularly cute female.
It’s not wireheading, in itself, that is the problem. As one of our philosophers has said, “The wireheaded, ye shall always have with you.” The problem is the ubiquity and the scale of it. No not exactly. The problem is the unbiquity and the scale and the inabilty of humane culture to suppress the wireheading. Historically, wireheading has always been low status. Culture used to proceed from top down. Today, culture proceeds from the bottom up. “Who am I to judge?”, says the cultural master. Hypocrisy is now the only sin. (Well… hypocrisy along side exlusiveness.)
The high-IQ, future-time oriented, otherwise functional person isn’t nearly as likely to get caught in a hedonic trap. He can use the wireheading in moderation and probably remain a productive person. The vast mass of ordinary men (and women) will not be so lucky. They will get trapped in a vicious (as in vice) cycle. The cultural master occasionally imbibes of the wirehead. How hypocritical of him to forbid it to the mass man!!
So, the wage gap is much in the news these days. But we don’t have a wage gap so much as we have an Agency Gap. And the ubiquity and scale of wireheading is going to make that gap worse. That’s freedom, baby.
Man, you’ve got to step up the quality of sound. I’ve noticed it not being very good before, but this one takes the cake — popping, breathing into the mike, overloading on the gain.
Nothing takes someone out of a movie or podcast faster or better than bad sound. I’m only halfway through the podcast and I’ve so distracted by all the bad noise that I can hardly follow your theme.
Very relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3q2mXDSqRU
I second the comment in the sound quality. I had to stop listening to the episode due to all the loud popping noises.