QC 1 Living Virtually

Living Virtually

How did the invention of photography lead us to a world where we live entirely virtually? From photojournalism, war and anarchy, to wild hedonistic people gathered naked in the desert in search of communion, Alie Ward will point us towards a future where...

Surprisingly the team that built Burke’s Knowledge Web met in virtual reality at the start of the millenium in software that preceded Second Life, advised by VR pioneer Jaron Lanier , Douglas Engelbart (known as father of the mouse, premiered at the Mother of All Demos, but basically he invented the Internet), as well as virtual community maven Howard Rheingold.

We built a 3D immersive VR prototype so that you could fly through the nested spheres of centuries of human innovations, as envisioned in Burke’s design. It is shown in the Re-Connections program (55 minutes in).

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In a way the Knowledge Web is a first step towards uploading our consciousness speculated upon at the end of this episode and alluded to in the next, since it embodies Burke’s creativity, research, and his unique way of seeing the world.