[WITI No. 80] The metaverse is hard and difficult to define, we're living in a pre-metaverse world, an unexpected South American guest
Greetings and salutations reader! Welcome to 80th edition of What is the Information? where I share with you what I’m reading and thinking about. You’re in close company - inside my head for few minutes each week! I’ll share with you a thought or two from a book (or 3) I’m consuming, a new word and something fun I stumbled upon the internet. Thank you for reading.
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I’m back to reading The Metaverse by Matthew Ball. We’ve arrived to the point where Ball is describing current rudimentary attempts at actualizing the metaverse - mostly through video games and specifically, Roblox and Fortnight. If you have children in your house who are older than 10 years old, you’ve probably heard of one or the other.
My older daughter even made us play Roblox as a family for her 13th and 14th birthday. She built up a bunch of in-world currency to share with all of us so that we could have a “build battle” where we each designed, built, furnished and decorated virtual homes in a fixed period of time. When time ended, we stopped building and judged each of our designs.
Needless to say, me and my wife lost the challenge. Our homes were basic, dark and poorly planned. Both of my daughters designed lovely homes, save for the random porcelain toilets I placed throughout their projects. My mischief made for some great laughs.
These games are only shadows of what is required for the metaverse that fulfills Ball’s definition:
A massively scaled and interoperable network of real-time rendered 3D virtual worlds that can be experienced synchronously and persistently by an effectively unlimited number of users with an individual sense of presence and continuity of data, such as identity, history, entitlements, objects, communications, and payments.
As you can see this is a very long definition and he breaks up each of the features of this metaverse definition into chapter long discussions. As he discussed how Roblox and Fortnight get around some of the technological limitations, I imagined traveling to a place more than once.
For example, when we fly into Fort Lauderdale to visit grandma, we become more and more familiar with the airport. It’s as if I’ve downloaded into my mind a map of the airport into my fast memory where I know which way to go for baggage claim or a cup of coffee. Roblox and Fortnight patch their games with frequent updates so that players can experience new features. The patch familiarizes the computer to optimize the encounter. Our annual trip to south Florida is a patch for my brain which allows me to habituate myself to the setting.
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We had an unexpected guest from the South America this week. I went downstairs and heard a screech (which I was too groggy to question) and didn’t realize that a Double Yellow-Headed Amazon Parrot was perched on our back porch light.
We don’t know how he got there or how long he was in the weather. The temperature was dipping into the 60s and that was probably too cold for him. Our cats were mesmerized - I doubt they ever saw a bird that large so close. This bird messed up my morning routine! I had to chase the cats in the house and made arrangements for this beautiful friend to get somewhere safe. The bird would cry out, “MOM!” which startled me and suggested to me that it lived with children.
I had a friend who had a similar type of bird. My friend’s bird was a grass green and her mimicry would impress you that a bird could “talk”. There’s nothing that bird wouldn’t test the strength of its beak on. This bird was destructive. He would bite furniture, pick rocks off the fireplace mantle, lay waste to anything that would relent to hit bite.
The lady from the bird shelter was afraid that our new friend would bite her. “Amazonian Parrot bites hurt - a lot!” Thankfully, by bribing him with melon, she coaxed him down. She threw a towel on him and placed him in a improvised travel cage, i.e. a large laundry hamper. Even though the parrot had a leg band, the owner still hasn’t come forward. These birds live a long-time, sometimes as much as 80 years. Sometimes an elderly owner will release their bird when they can no longer care for it. Sometimes, the children of a deceased bird owner will release the bird because they don’t want to care for it. The shelter lady said this bird is worth a few thousand bucks.
Bird Shelter lady also mentioned in India, that dreaming about parrot visiting your home means you’ll meet some new people. A quick google search revealed that a green parrot symbolizes your childhood. This was no dream but I have not thought about my friend’s bird for at least 35 years.
Word of the week: Polemical
I encountered this word reading about the recently deceased French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard. It reminds me of having a spiky opinion on a topic to inspire controversy. Depending on the topic, that seems like more trouble than it’s worth.
Find of the week
Did you know Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball had a daughter? What happened to little Ricky? Not sure if she can Babalu but she sure can Charleston!
Can you think of other ways the internet/computer/technology imitates life? I suppose all that stuff is art - art imitates life or is it viceversa? Had a strange visitor trigger long dormant memories? Let me know by pressing the button below:
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That’s all I got this week! Thank you for reading!
-George
What does she do if no one claims the bird?