{"id":2153,"date":"2010-04-04T20:10:36","date_gmt":"2010-04-05T04:10:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/?p=2153"},"modified":"2010-04-04T20:28:01","modified_gmt":"2010-04-05T04:28:01","slug":"virtualization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/2010\/04\/04\/virtualization\/","title":{"rendered":"Virtualization"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been thinking about \u201cvirtualization\u201d\u009d in various senses this week.<\/p>\n

First of all, I\u2019ve recently read some SF in which some characters are living (or might be living) in a virtual world that might be a subprocess of our own reality. I\u2019m thinking both of Jonathan Lethem\u2019s brilliant novel Chronic City <\/a><\/em>and of Christopher Shay\u2019s great Flurb <\/em>story \u201cIntheBeginning<\/a>.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Secondly, I\u2019ve been listening to my son, Rudy, Jr., talking about how his and Alex Menendez\u2019s internet company, Monkeybrains, can set up virtual machines for their clients to use as their \u201cservers.\u201d\u009d There\u2019s a company called VMware that makes a business of selling virtualization tools<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So you might have two, or five, or more people using one and the same hardware box as their server, but with very little chance of interaction between their virtual machines. Ideally, there\u2019d be no chance of seepage among the virtual machines, but in the real world, there\u2019s always a hack. Rudy and Alex, as \u201cGods of the Cthonic Multiverse,\u201d\u009d can certainly move information from one virtual machine to the other.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Trying to get my old free software programs to run in Windows 7, I discovered <\/a>that I could download some free VM-style ware from Microsoft that pops up a window that\u2019s running a virtual machine whose operating system is the older platform of Windows XP. And Cellab <\/em>runs okay in there, and Boppers <\/em>runs, kind of\u2014except that it crashes a lot. And Chaos <\/em>doesn\u2019t run at all.<\/p>\n

There are two odd things about depending on virtual machines to replicate past conditions. For one, there will inevitably come a time when more layers are necessary. Like in ten years, you might need to run Quibix 13, which runs a virtual machine with Windows 10, which runs a VM with Windows 7, which runs a virtual machine with Windows XP, which runs your legacy program. <\/p>\n


\n[Drawn with Ultra Fractal using latest online rvr.upr params RudyGuadalupe]<\/em><\/p>\n

And the second odd thing is that the simulations will be imperfect. So get glitches that are kind of like supernatural phenomena. A patch of fractal fuzz, a ripple in the wall, a friend who explodes into angular scraps of computer-graphics \u201cfnoor.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n

It might be nice to science-fictionalize a situation where someone is living amid multiple layers of VMs\u2014with crashes and glitches. Of course this theme has been treated before, it\u2019s all been done before, but there\u2019s always the hope of doing it with a little more intelligence and soul.<\/p>\n

One path out of the VM stack is to meta-virtualize your ware. That is, you \u201cport\u201d\u009d it. You abandon the old shell of code, and excise the soul, the core algorithm, and install that in a new body. That\u2019s what I ended up doing with Chaos last week. I ported my favorite fractal, the Rudy Set, <\/a>from the moribund Chaos <\/em>ware into the vigorous younger program Ultra Fractal<\/em>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Looked at in another sense when you build a house, you\u2019re making a virtual world for yourself. A place where it\u2019s warm and dry and the bugs and dogs can\u2019t come in. A beaver dam is a virtual world, and so is an anthill.<\/p>\n

When my old pal Peter Lamborn Wilson, a.k.a. Hakim Bey, writes about congenial gatherings as \u201cTemporal Autonomous Zones,\u201d\u009d he\u2019s writing about virtualization\u2014see his online TAZ article<\/a>. Sometimes you manage to fall into a scene that\u2019s out of this world. An alternate world to live in, an all-meat VR.<\/p>\n

The use of the word \u201cvirtual\u201d\u009d seems jarring in a physical context, as we think of virtuality as wedded to the notion of immaterial software. But in some sense, matter is <\/em> a kind of software made up of quantum computations, so lets do go ahead and say that, for instance, a picnic blanket creates a virtual world emulation of a living-room rug.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m always trying to break away from the received idea that we need computers for interesting things. Post-chip computation was a big theme in my novels Postsingular <\/a>and Hylozoic<\/em>, not that this feature of the books was widely remarked upon. I see chips as a passing fad, like mankind\u2019s earlier obsessions with clockwork, with radiation, or with electricity, or with chemistry\/alchemy. Like I always say, a rock is a computer. He that hath ears let him hear.<\/p>\n

These days, with no particular writing project in mind, more and more things are spontaneously taking on the look of SF stories. It\u2019s how I see the world, particularly when I don\u2019t have any particular goals in mind.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The other day, I was watching a DVD of a concert movie from 1964, The T.A.M.I. Show <\/a><\/em>, with a very wide range of acts, including, near the end, James Brown followed by the Rolling Stones.<\/p>\n

I like and respect the idea <\/em>of James Brown, but his shows have never actually done much for me\u2014not even when I saw him live at the Louisville State Fairgrounds in 1962, oh my brothers. It\u2019s exciting to see someone acting so weird but, for my taste, Brown was too inner-directed. I always had a sense that he doesn\u2019t actually see the audience. This said, I recognize that many people, such as Thom Metzger, think he\u2019s great\u2014see Metzger\u2019s historically weird 1991 novel Shock Totem <\/em> (today available for $1.57 on e-Bay) about a guy addicted to shock treatment and James Brown.<\/p>\n

The young Mick Jagger and his band follow James Brown in the T.A.M.I. movie, and I\u2019d thought I\u2019d see a similarity in their dance styles. Surely the older man was a kind of role model for the younger. Certainly their shoes are similar. But the Mick of 1964\u2019s dance moves are lackadaisical, quasi-ironic, more like sketches of things he might do. Meta-dance. He\u2019s like the Ultra Fractal port of the Chaos <\/em>version of the Cubic Mandelbrot set. At the time, many thought Mick inferior to James, but he was in fact doing something different. He was using a new operating system.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

What impresses me the most in this performance Mick\u2019s eyes<\/em>\u2014he\u2019s so alert, watching the audience, the other band members, continually aware of his surroundings, although at certain points he too goes into the chanting trance of the singer.<\/p>\n

In one cross-stage shot I could see the big-mama Electronovision cameras they were using to simulcast this concert to movie theaters\u2014as well as to record it for posterity. And here, again, I had an SF feeling. The trope of the new transmission device. <\/em> For 3D, or maybe for feelies, or telepathy, or matter transmission. But not exactly those old things…something more<\/em>…<\/p>\n

I\u2019d like to go to that 1964 T. A. M. I. concert. Suppose we assume that time-travel is impossible. So then, the only way to go to the show is to virtualize the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium of 1964, and worm into that VR. Assume that I want the musicians and the go-go dancers to look exactly like in the film. And maybe I\u2019ll go ahead and have it be in silvery shades of black and white. How do I get there?<\/p>\n


\n[Drawn with Ultra Fractal using latest online rvr.upr params RudyJellyfish]<\/em><\/p>\n

The traditional way is to plug wires into my brain and jack me into a computer simulation. But\u2014for reasons I\u2019ve discussed before on this blog<\/a>\u2014I tend to think computer-based VR is never going to be all that convincing. The simulation should be in some sense physical, analog, perhaps based on quantum-computers, like the pocket-universe VRs that Christopher Shea talks about in \u201cIntheBeginning.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re going physical, there\u2019s no reason to dick around with corny wires in your brain. Make a damned tunnel to a bubble world. That\u2019s the way to do it. I\u2019m going there now. Maybe I\u2019ll catch a buzz with Mick and Terri Garr\u2014she\u2019s the go-go dancer throwing her head around and then doing zombie-moves right behind Chuck Berry.<\/p>\n


\n[Drawn with Ultra Fractal using latest online rvr.upr params RudyStarBranch]<\/em><\/p>\n

Mick will have, of all people, the plain-jane songstress Leslie Gore on his arm. And we four will bop down to the beach and catch a ride on a chrome-gray UFO. We\u2019ll ride the virtualization into the far future\u2014all the way to 2010.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been thinking about \u201cvirtualization\u201d\u009d in various senses this week. First of all, I\u2019ve recently read some SF in which some characters are living (or might be living) in a virtual world that might be a subprocess of our own reality. I\u2019m thinking both of Jonathan Lethem\u2019s brilliant novel Chronic City and of Christopher Shay\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2153"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2158,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2153\/revisions\/2158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}