Overview

In class on Tuesday we began our discussion about communications media with a pump-up jam by the band Of Montreal, who have chosen to advertise their new album, "Skeletal Lamping," through a model similar to an ARG.  The idea behind the campaign, according to the manufacturer's website, is that "every object you bring into your home should feel exceptional to you, otherwise, it just adds to the clutter and chaos of your life." Finding order in disorder was also a concept we associated with Charles Stross's Halting State. Some of the large-scale ideas and questions we recognized in the novel were the intersections of reality and virtual reality, control and chaos; information entropy, which we were first introduced to by Thomas Pynchon; TINAG (This Is Not A Game); and, lastly, the role of technology in politics.  The novel asks how previously separate fields interact (as in reality and virtual reality), and whether an understanding of these interactions is necessary to be competitive in Stross's picture of a global market.

The three major themes of the novel that we focused on were media, games, and surveillance.  The focus of our discussion for most of the class time was the variety of communication interfaces used throughout the novel and how different mediums affect the ways in which characters communicate.

Media

The following interfaces are used by characters in the novel:

• computers (server farms, laptops & desktops)
• instant messaging
• headsets (also called specs, glasses, goggles)
• keyboards (actual and virtual)
• smartphones
• television (or the futuristic merger of computers and TV)
• paper

Of these media, we discussed extensively the implications of two particular forms, keyboards and glasses.  The keyboards that the characters use are unique in that they are not necessarily physically existent (though an actual keyboard does save Jack's life on p. 173); subdermal chips have been implanted in characters' fingers in an effort to modify human bodies in order to make them work more efficiently with available technologies.

The glasses also work as an extension of the human body. They are gesture-based, with different settings of opacity, and enable the wearer to share information with others by means of the goggles -- in a sense, they work as portable desktops that interconnect humans on a virtual level. The glasses add a certain amount of pertinent information about physical reality.

The discussion then drifted to a little more general questions about media and its implications raising such questions as: What do chat rooms and online worlds imply about identity?  Are we really more connected with one another though virtual reality?  Is technology designed to enhance our interactions or is it there to keep us apart?

Following the comments and discussions involved there we drifted into a conversation about augmented reality and how the goggles in the story were a perfect example of augmented reality. 

We discussed the role of technology in human interactions and relationships, both within the novel and in our own lives.  Communication has become much more casual with the help of new media and parameters of interaction have been altered; we questioned whether this has had a detrimental impact on human relationships, because, after all, the media space we know today and that which Stross has forecasted for the future isn't the first to incorporate the element of distance (letters do this), nor is the deliberate construction of social identity unique to virtual reality.

Passages

"Barnaby shakes her head, then pushes a stray lock back behind her ear. You notice that she's got very fine, fly-away hair. 'One moment.' She flexes her hands, airboarding -- there are subdermal chips in each of her finger joints, she can probably type two hundred words per minute without RSI." (Stross 89)

In this passge, we see how a medium literally becomes an extension of the human body (sound familiar?). Technology is used to enhance Barnaby's ability to perform her job more efficiently and thus supplements her existence in reality with aspects of virtual reality.  Instead of being two separate entities, technology and the human body work together to enhance Barnaby's capabilities.

"Simultaneously, back in the real world, something punches you hard in your side, rocking you back on your feet. You stagger, and the motion sensors in your glasses cut them back to semi-transparent -- an emergency measure -- and you see Mr. Wu Chen run through the doorway. You feel a little dizzy and instinctively raise your hand. It's just a dagger strike -- no real hit points to it -- so you stagger after Chen." (Stross 173)

The intersection of reality and virtual reality is evident in this passage. It's hard for Jack to know what's really happening and what's virtual: in an "emergency measure" his glasses take him from one world to the other, and he contemplates his injury in terms of "hit points." Just as Barnaby's subdermal chips allow her to work more efficiently, Jack's glasses provide him with a sense of augmented reality that results in a complete infusion of two seemingly seperate worlds and awareness of the larger interconnected systems he is a part of. 

Terms

Augmented reality:  Enhancing reality with computer-generated information in order to improve reality. (ex. GPS devices, cockpits of fighter planes, night-vision goggles)

Links

"Goggles"-style contact lenses: An article discussing the use of goggles (also referred to as virtual displays) created by the University of Washington.

An article on MMO property rights: An article about virtual reality, real world business applications of virtual reality, and the legality of it all.

An actual legal case concerning property in an MMO: An article about how imaginary real estate holds up in court.