Well, pretty soon.
The latest draft of the manuscript is off to prospective agents, and I’m working on the script for the film, for which I plan on having a rough cut done by the end of this month. Aggressive? A wee bit, but we’re talking a rough cut. That really should be that hard. (more…)
50,600 words (192 pages) later I have completed the second draft of the companion book to “Virtually Real” the documentary film. Wow. To think that as I approached 20,000 words I wondered if I could ever find enough content to finish 30,000 words. At 50,000 words I’m wondering if I should put my head down and include all of the content that I have left out of the book so far — content that would easily push my past 100,000 words. (more…)
I had so many lofty goals to pursue over the the past two weeks. When you have two kids, it’s amazing how life gets in the way during the Holidays. Well, it’s a New Year, and time to make a plan for turning all the material I have into something worthwhile. Henrik Bennetsen at the Stanford Humanities Lab has invited me to his Metaverse U conference coming up in February. As Jamais Cascio pointed out, Henrik’s conference is going to be very Virtual Worlds heavy, but for a project called Virtually Real, that’s probably not a bad thing.
What I fear now, however, is what it’s going to take to get the media rights to some of the video / images I’d ideally like to use in this documentary: think Tron.
I was reading clips on the Imagining the Internet website from Elon University and came across this quote, ““Someday we will build up a world telephone system, making necessary to all peoples the use of a common language or common understanding of languages, which will join all the people of the earth into one brotherhood. There will be heard throughout the earth a great voice coming out of the ether which will proclaim, ‘Peace on earth, good will towards men.’”
I read that and had that EUREKA! moment, after which I wrote this potential first line for Virtually Real (either the book, or the documentary), “Welcome to the future where everything is different and nothing’s changed.”
I had been ruminating over the reality that Web 3.0, or the Metaverse, or whatever the hell anyone wants to call it would create a clash of cultures out of the need to find a common language. Here an old-time futurist (mull on that for a while) foresaw the need for a common language because of the use of the telephone, and that that common language would create harmony, and peace. I wonder how he would have felt if the plausible common language outcome was Mandarin, and not English. But I digress.
But not really. In reading this passage I found my historical touchstone, the previous illustration of how we, humans, adjust to influential technological changes. Fear. Promise. Dispair. Hope. People envision the entire range of plausible outcomes, and yet, technology invariably ends up augmenting our world, not taking it over.
As Jamais Cascio reminded me over coffee, “technology does not change culture; they develop together.” There is no tail wagging the dog. There is a symbiosis, despite the Luddites’ fear of technology, and the technophones’ belief that we’ll all live richer, better lives solely because of technology.
So how does one create a narratively compelling story out of the tag line “nothing changes?” Well, I’ve done it before, winning a staged reading in a playwriting competition with a play called “Cold Coffee,” about a diner where at the end of the day, the characters are different, but nothing else about how each day progresses changes. I sense the development of a theme here.
I can’t say that there are never dull moments. There are many moments where I find myself drifting off and staring at walls, but that’s a whole different issue, which I think is more related to raising children. But I digress.
The last few weeks have seen exciting conversations with Jamais Cascio, Damon Hernandez, and Henrik Bennetsen (Stanford Humanties Lab). I feel like I’m really getting a lot closer to beginning writing this story. Don’t'chya love that? I’m getting closer to the beginning.
The project, however, has followed a classic curve of my thinking I knew what I was pursuing, and setting an aggressive goal of researching and interviewing for four months then going straight into post-production. Yeah, right.
We’ve seen a few of those statements over the past few months. Eight months in, however, I feel like I can almost taste the primary theme of this story. The frustration lies, however, in my not being able to pinpoint that taste yet; It’s still alluding me. ARGH!
A few more weeks of chewing all that I have, and I think I’ll be close.
One thing for sure, it revolves heavily around the Metavers Roadmap Project.
So what does the Asus announcement about cheap laptops have to do with Virtually Real? Nothing and everything.
The introduction of the $299 laptop with 256MB of RAM, and 2 GB of storage is just the next step in development. I know when I saw my first USB flash memory stick I instantly thought “when is this going to replace the hard drive?” Well, here we are.
Let’s apply that tangible change to other aspects of technology (tangible in both the physical size of these new laptops, and virtually tangible in how few dollars one needs to spend on one). Of course this exercise is nothing new — just think of Moore’s law.
A few of the folks I have interviewed for Virtually Real have gone so far to say that 3D immersive spaces are going to be a passing fad, just as was VRML 90s, and other 3D technological attempts. Speak with a futurist like Jamais Cascio and you start to get a different sense of where things may go.
Virtually Real has been steadily chugging along — one of the reasons that I have been unable to post since the Virtual World Conference. A few of the people I have interviewed since then: Danah Boyd (USC/UC Berkeley); Julian Dibbell (Play Money); Christian Renauld (Cisco); Sibley Verbeek (Electric Sheep); Reuben Steiger (Millions of Us).
All of these people have such great insight from their perspectives of this field. What really changed my perspective on this project, however, was my in-world (SecondLife) interview with Christian Renauld, and then introduction to the Metaverse Roadmap Project.
After all, as I had realized a while ago, Virtually Real is not about the technology. I knew that, but I hadn’t really realized what it WAS about. But now I see how it is about how people are going to relate to this new technology.
So what’s coming up? An interview with Damon Hernandez. Attending a Metaverse Meetup. Another meeting with Christian Renauld. More investigation of the Metaverse Roadmap Project.
Stay tuned!
Isn’t this the typically crucial element to any book, film, web clip? After all, if there is no cohesive story, what’s the point? I recently went through an exercise of creating a “treatment” of this film project for National Geographic. Who knows if they’ll buy the idea, but the exercise was invaluable. A treatment consists of a concept, theme(s), characters, and summary of the film. Now, the concept, and themes I have nailed.
The idea for Virtually Real came about after hearing Julian Dibbell speak about his book on Terry Gross’ Fresh Air on NPR. I was fascinated not by the technology, but by the commodification of virtual goods. I’ve been involved in technology for long enough to be jaded, but in an insular enough area of it to be naive about what else was going on (http://rjlavallee.com). My real goal in creating Virtually Real is in uncovering the eventual effect that would have on society. After all, we are a capitalist nation ruled by the Allmighty Dollar. There’s some stuff about under God, and indivisible, and all that, but we all know what really has the influence in our “real” world.
So I start some research. I read the book. THEN I go to the first ever Virtual Goods Summit at Stanford University http://www.vgsummit.com/. Nuts. Then I start doing more research. I make an avatar and travel around http://SecondLife.com. Nuttier. then I start Googling and looking for how many genres of virtual worlds there are out there.
One might argue that culturally significant virtual worlds are already here. THAT is going to be the focus of Virtually Real. The audience is not those already in the know, it is for those barely aware, and for whom the prospect of worlds this real will definitely create fear. The project is going to be very crystal ball in its outcome, but its approach and conclusions will be based on current fact. I will not be making drastic logical leaps in the conclusions.
Another benefit of today’s technology is the tools that I can easily place in my hands allowing me to be very old-school in my approach. Like the PBS outdoorsman documentaries of the 60s, today’s digital technology is allowing me to research, interview, film (tape), write, and edit this entire project on my own. Enough goofing around and learning as I went on other projects helped teach me how to do this, and make it look and sound good.
This is going to be fun.
But, shit, some funding sure would help.
Powered by WordPress