I have been scouring the Net for this book, Plowing the Dark by Richard Powers. I heard that it is similar to Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson in that it talks about a virtual Cyberworld where people worldwide log-on to and interact with others and their environment in real-time.
I’m a big fan of Stephenson and of his peers, William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. If you haven’t realized this yet, then you haven’t been looking around this website enough *grins*. I remember reading most of their old stuff but never actually owned them until recently, (I think I dug them out of some corner in my primary school library or something like that) and would like to read Power’s take on this genre. Well it looks like I will have to access a library for a hardcopy of the book after all as I have not been able to find an e-book version.
Talking about the “Metaverse” or the on-line virtual world that is the basis of both of the books mentioned above, one should look into Second Life. It is the closest form of a “real” virtual cyberworld I have seen yet. In fact, I have been participating in the beta test ever since I heard about it in April. In short, all I can say is that it is a very intriguing concept that uses state of the art technology. Being able to chat and interact with people all over the world in real-time and a realistic looking environment really brings to life all the ideas that one can imagine in being a virtual world where almost anything is possible. Events are constantly being held in-world, users buy land and build houses and shops, sometimes in a group as building in-world is done in real-time with everyone seeing the results at the same time. Users take a lot of effort to make their in-game avatars looking surreally like how they are in the real-world and even upload images to be made into clothing. Any fans of ICQ/IRC chat programs and enjoy messing with 3D design programs will totally feel at home there. If you do decide to take a look, remember to let them know that I sent you.
