He who walks behind the Mega-Grid...

The SVVR conference is still all the news in Second Life circles.  Mostly the discussion centers around Palmer Luckey's (one of the Oculus crew) pontificating about the future of VR.

Of course, he has joined the chorus that Second Life is too old and too difficult to use.  He, like many other people in the VR biz (including SL founder Rosedale), is in a very keen display of downplaying SL's success.  SL's influence is being minimized to the point of ridiculousness. This is really underhanded and awful because if we all step back and look at reality...SECOND LIFE IS THE ONLY VR ON THE MARKET.  It is the only one successful and still standing.  I reiterate again, the other contenders failed.  They failed big time.  They failed because they didn't take into account what makes SL successful.  The reason they didn't take into account was all about ideology and an almost religious fundamentalism.

1) Ideology - Most VR bigwigs are extremely invested in Creative Commons.  Which means the little people, us, give up our intellectual property rights.  While the bigwigs get to keep theirs AND profit off of ours.

2) Religious Fundamentalism - Many in the tech biz, out of fear of death, are enthralled by the idea that they will transcend their bodies and become one with computers.  No, I'm not making this up.  They really think they will be post human.  They are so deluded by this fantasy, that they are actively coding our technology with an eye to when they will experience their IT Rapture.  The left behind (us) will have to deal with their crappy software architecture.

The main crux with their problems regarding Second Life are that people who use it fought hard for their VR rights (and we are still fighting) and we may be the only audience for VRs.  Second Life grew as much as it could and reached just about all of the people who are comfortable with the VR experience.  This is worrying for VR creators.  Because that means the dystopic fantasy VR they want will never come to pass and their dreams of enslaving everyone into VR will not be attainable.

Audience question for Palmer: You and Carmack talk about building the metaverse as a moral imperative - why? 

Palmer: "This is one of those crazy man topics", he begins, but says it comes down to this: Everyone wants to have a happy life, but "it's going to be impossible to give everyone everything they want", such as expensive consumer items. With VR, however, you can do that. It's easy for us to say, living in the great state of California, that VR is not as good as the real world, but a lot of people in the world don't have as good an experience in real life as we do here. Also, it's going to be useful for training, and education, "There's a lot of reasons that it's imperative we create a perfect virtual reality."  Ed Mason also mentions people who are bedridden can benefit from VR. 

Luckey Palmer - The Mix Agency May 19, 2014

There you go, straight from the horse's mouth at the recent SVVR.  Scary isn't it?  The moment I read that, I immediately thought of that crazy old horror film Children of the Corn.  Luckey Palmer is Issac.

Instead of using his influence and billions to fight for the rights of people in technology, Palmer wants to feed off our misery.  Tech people are all about rights for themselves and kicking the ladder out behind them rather than give a helping hand to their fellow man.  Its their mentality.  I'm not saying that they haven't created great tech for everyone, but I am saying that they are deluded enough and rich enough to make a real everlasting and horrifying effect on our lives.  As drug companies and insurance companies have turned the wheels to benefit their business over the public, as food companies have turned the wheels to make sure that the food they want to sell takes precedence, so will tech companies turn the wheels to sell that they want.  Our rights be damned.