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Intersection - Spooks, Ghosts, and the Empty Quarter
 I've had one of those intersections of information again, the kind that get you thinking about 3 different things at once that turn out to be the same thing.  Individually they're probably not worth writing about, but together they demand a core dump...

I read Gibson's Spook Country last week.  It was good in a Gibson way, which means it reads like a really really good article from Wired with a bit of action and suspense, and more cool real-world stuff than you can shake a stick at.  I highly recommend reading it with a Wikipedia/Google terminal nearby so you can look up all the references he drops.  I now know more about upper-end hotels in LA and the logistics of shipping containers than I ever needed to.

One of the side stories in the book involves a guy who makes locative art.  It incorporates GPS positioning with wireless technology, and is tied in with the internet.  Put on a GPS enabled set of VR goggles and you can see digital artifacts that people have put in the place you're in overlaid on your real world view.  Neat, huh?  Not much on it's own, but...

Yesterday I received a surprise present, a copy of the Anime Dennou Coil from a First Life source.  I had never heard of this anime before, and just had time to watch the opening credits last night.  It was...intriguing.  Another trip to Wikipedia to see what they had to say about it.  Surprise!  It's about augmented reality - the characters put on special glasses that allow them to see the an informational net overlaid on the real world. I haven't even seen it and I'm hooked already, and things are beginning to intersect.

Now today I read about Google's possible virtual world project tying together Google Earth and Google Sketchup.  Assuming this doesn't turn out to be just a rumor there may be some kind of virtual overlay to the pre-existing Google Earth you can look at through the browser, complete with AVs and buildings.

Now I have to confess I don't have very high hopes for this mythical Google project as a place for digital people.  I doubt they are going to have a monetary system, or beautiful and nuanced AVs, or any of the depth that Second Life has.  It will probably be a "tool" for the most part, and I doubt it will pass the Bury Test* for virtual worlds.

( *Bury Test - A virtual world has no chance of being satisfactory for me unless it has:

1. Cybernetic Eyes
2. Bondage Furniture )

But still, the intersections get you thinking.  Wouldn't it be cool for an atomic world person to sit down in a cafe in the atomic world, don a pair of GPS-enabled goggles (googles?), and lo and behold there I am, cybernetic eyes and all, sitting across from you at the table.  We could even hold a conversation through some global IM system.  Whether or not I would be able to see you from my virtual version of Earth depends on imaging technology in place, but I suspect by the time the technology is in place every public space in the USA is going to be blanketed with surveillance cameras anyway, so why not use them? (I say this only half-sarcastically.  The other half is scared to death of the idea.)

Of course, even if Digital People were able to use Sketchup to construct virtual buildings to live in in this new world, wouldn't people complain when, say the digital highrise I build blocks your view of the Eiffel Tower when you put your googles on?  Will constructing virtual buildings on top of atomic ones be forbidden by law? We may gravitate towards the empty places of the world to build our homes in the virtual overlay to avoid offending the atomic worlders.

If your atomic-world cruise ship sails to the abandoned harbor of Deception Island, will you don your googles to catch a glimpse of the gleaming spires the Digital People have erected there among the half melted ruins of the whaling station?  If you swim near the atoll around Okinotorishima turn on your GPS-goggles, you might see a mermaid swimming to the coral city they have built under the sea. Will the weary traveller, lost in the depths of the Empty Quarter of Arabia, push on through the sands just a bit further to see the marble columns of an Ubar that never was, now reborn as a nexus of virtual trade?

Will we walk among you, beside you, digital ghosts who can only be seen through the looking glass?  Well, one can dream...