From: jmilhoan@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (JT)
Subject: Re: reality?
Organization: The Ohio State University
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 04:50:36 GMT

In article <guest.2@fcit-c1.fcit.monash.edu.au> guest@fcit-c1.fcit.monash.edu.au writes:
>Don't know if this is getting to you all, but ah'll give it a shot anyway.
>
>Cyberpunk is just a fantasy that we ain't going to achieve. Or if we do it 
>ain't going to be too close to what they think it is. (Like people could
>argue we had reached something like cyberpunk). 
>	Firstly, anarchy and corporations rule?

Dunno about anarchy, but corporations do.  Business, economy, trade, blah, blah, blah...

>Watching America and Australia, governments are always going to be the 
>front of what is going on. 

Yeah, but the corporations are behind the government... vice versa.

>Corporations may have people in the government, 
>and they may bribe the government like anything, but if they want to do
>anything, requisition anything, they will have to go through the government.

And vice versa again... wouldn't you say that a government isn't one big corporation in a way?

>	Cyberspace, what will it be?

I think of it as a grandiose GUI ;).  Seriously... read on.

>OK, I don't hack. But from all the info. I have collated on it, it seems
>a 3-D world in electronic space won't be existing for the purpose of storing 
>information which can be hacked into. It will be purely for educational, 
>entertainmment and maybe simulations (mainly combat simulations). Real 
>hackers are going to be dealing with hundreds of characters to do the hacking
>getting the real stuff. 

OK, you said you don't hack?  That's fine...  why couldn't cyberspace be a 3-D GUI of internet?  This is very feasible.  Maybe not now, but there was a time when a person had to know all kinds of commands just to load and operate an application.  Now we have GUIs that allow us to use word processors that require us only to type when we work on our documents.  No os commands, other than pointing and clicking.  I work in a lab where people know how to use mathematica, word perfect, etc., and come up to me be

cause they dont know how to turn the computer on.  Hardly hackers... 

my point:  you wouldn't necessarily have to be a hacker in order to use "cyberspace".  Hell, it is being developed as VIRTUAL REALITY.  What can be more cognitive than a representation of walking and picking up things, stepping through doors?  Even a mouse cursor in Windoze or the Mac OS is far less cognitive.

>	Cybertech.
>	Electronic limbs, eyes and all are an interesting idea. The millitary
>must be onto it by now (at least in America), 

They are...

>but the feasibility of it for 
>private sector mercenaries and all is somewhat limited. Optics and audio, 
>maybe, but who needs a cyberlimb that can crush someone's head in when you 
>can just get a good gun and take them out? All that metal in an arm would 
>kinda set off a metal detector like. 

like what? ;)  Seriously though, there is research being done where people who have lost arms, legs, and hands, can have the nerves connected to circuits to drive artificial limbs.  Of course they dont regain full usage through this, but they are getting closer and closer.

There is one man who has an eye implant which gives him 50X vision, and would like to have zoom, but he says it is still being developed.  I heard this from a paranoid, tech-head instructor of mine.  I'll try to find out where he heard this.

No comment on the skull-crushing cyber arm, other than I wouldn't be surprised if they would take a functioning prosthesis and beef it up, if not just for the heck of it.

>Anyway, just interested here to see what people think.

Im not flaming in any way, just my opinions, and you have yours.  Fine by me. 
:)

JT