I am 45 and I have programmed computers since I was six.

I never had a problem with my neck or back until last year, and since I have had two cases of debilitating pain that took two months to recover from- so that is four months of not being able to work, not being able to use computers for longer than a few minutes at a time.

During my first episode I dramatically improved my ergonomics under the guidance of my physical therapist. I still had a second episode about 9 months later.

This is NOT anything you want to encounter- the pain can get so bad that - especially near the beginning of my two month recovery cycle, the only way to get to sleep for a couple weeks is to just crash.

I look around and everyone I see has poor posture. The neck hunched over. Looking at phones or laptops. Even with the screen positioned at eye level- I donâ(TM)t think that that is the solution that people think it is. It is taking me serious retraining to learn to push my head back and it feels deeply unnatural to me.

I would not think that this is just an illusion or a fantasy or other peoples problem.

That is a popular misunderstanding. The plank length does NOT mean that the universe is digital. We do not have any evidence whatsoever that space is not infinitely subdivisible, or that coordinates are on any kind of cellular arrangement.

Many of them DO work- working at a convenience store, or some other part-time Freeter work. Whether they do or do not, they often live in the same bedroom they had as a child, under the support of mom or dad.

So we need to go back to making joints and tendons like they did in the 1970s..?

Why are we worried about astronomers? In fifty years time, I bet most telescopes would be in outer space, and astronomers would talk to them via the solar systems Internet.

So, I'm rewatching, just for you. (How's that for work?) And I'm about 45 minutes into Alien, and I'm not seeing what you're alleging is there. There *is* a chain of command, but I don't see that anything is particularly distinguished on sex. For example, while the superior gets mad at her for judging that they should leave the guy outside, he also gets mad at the two guys complaining about their pay all the time. One woman slaps Ripley for wanting to have left them outside. But there's nothing, nothing at all, to indicate that any of this behavior is about sex or motivated by sexual discrimination. So in answer to "Riply's male superiors are constantly talking down to her in both movies" -- what I see so far (A) doesn't match that -- mostly I see arguments on principle, and (B) to the extent that male superiors "talk down" to her, they talk down to *everyone.* What I see, is that Ripley is being treated just like any other member of the crew. That's what I see, and if you see something different, I want you to present your evidence.

Now as for "Progressive" -- Progressive is not the same as Woke. "You know this idea of purity and you're never compromised and you're always politically woke and all that stuff, you should get over that quickly." -- Barack Obama

I'm all for progressive causes. I voted for Biden, and straight blue in the mid-terms. I'm 45, I've been a US citizen my entire life, and I've voted for Democrats in every single election since I turned 18. I have served as a poll observer, participated in phone-in campaigns, and participated in caucuses. In my opinion, Barack Obama is the best president we've had in my lifetime. You never hear Obama stating this woke nonsense. If he's not progressive, I don't know who is.

"Woke" and "Critical Race Theory" are a collection of ideas that are racist bullshit nonsense. They're un-American. They're completely out of step with what Frederick Douglass taught in his speech: The Composite Nation. "Woke" teaches that "yt" (or "whiteness") is a particular race of evil, the common enemy of the "People of Color." When the woke are challenged on "Well, why do Asians seem to be doing so well, if white people are so vested in oppressing everybody?", they respond with "Asians are white-adjacent." It's an ugly, nasty, racially tribal way of looking at life and the world, and it has no place in Frederick Douglass' vision of what would fulfill American promise.

Of course there are ethnicities and of course people share traits with people who share a culture. But we must never make racial categories something that the State obliges itself to discriminate on. That is a true and genuine meaning of: "Systemic Racism." There's nothing more systemically racist, than creating laws that treat people differently based on their race. While individuals may behave in racist ways, and they will, the remedy to that cannot be to bake racism into our government.

*This* is the progressive direction. Not this racist nonsense claiming the banner. Just because someone is saying "Hey, look at the plight of black people," it doesn't mean that they aren't racist. You already know if white people say "Hey, look at the plight of poor white people," that it doesn't mean that they aren't racist. What you need to realize is that racism is something deeper than whether somebody has suffered or not. Racism is when people look down on other people because of their race or ethnicity, and this is true regardless of whether they "have power" or not. A person could be powerful, or powerless, and not racist. And a person can be powerful, or powerless, and racist. What's important is to not be racist, and that means standing against racism, whether it comes from the "powerful" or the "powerless." Every person has a power. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.

There is in every struggle for rights an inner division. There are always people who are moving forward, and people who are moving backwards, within the very same movement. Woke jerks mis-cite Martin Luther King's Letters from a Birmingham Jail, all of the time. If they read more than a cherry-picked and non-transferrable sentence from it, which was about white people who opposed his non-violent civil resistance movement, they would see that he spent as much time in that essay writing about black nationalists -- the people who were the "woke" of his time, and more properly share the "woke" ideology.

Here's the Letter from the Birmingham Jail that the woke don't want to look at:

"""The other force is one of bitterness and hatred, and it comes perilously close to advocating violence. It is expressed in the various black nationalist groups that are springing up across the nation, the largest and best known being Elijah Muhammad's Muslim movement. Nourished by the Negro's frustration over the continued existence of racial discrimination, this movement is made up of people who have lost faith in America, who have absolutely repudiated Christianity, and who have concluded that the white man is an incorrigible "devil."

I have tried to stand between these two forces, saying that we need emulate neither the "do nothingism" of the complacent nor the hatred and despair of the black nationalist. For there is the more excellent way of love and nonviolent protest. I am grateful to God that, through the influence of the Negro church, the way of nonviolence became an integral part of our struggle. If this philosophy had not emerged, by now many streets of the South would, I am convinced, be flowing with blood.""" -- Martin Luther King, Letter from a Birmingham Jail, 1963

As for Ripley and her uniform:

I think it is a great thing that Ripley wore the uniform that was shared with her compatriots. That wasn't "woke." That was progressive. But not woke. AND EVERYBODY LOVED IT. All these Gen X nerds that are being called "racist" because they rightly know that woke sucks -- because they learned that segregation is wrong and not the American path -- they all loved Alien and Aliens and T2. They're not the sexist racists that they are accused of being by the self-proclaimed woke. That's just a downright dirty lie.

The very same people who enjoy women in sexy outfits! Who knew that being a sexual person, and being a human being, could exist in the same body? There's nothing wrong with movies made for men, that present women in a sexy way that men find attractive, just like there's nothing wrong with romance novels made for women, or movies made for women, that look with the female gaze, and portray Darcy as a rich man to court, or Andie going for Blane in 16 Candles. People get to want who they want, and what they want, and people get to share their ideas in movies and writing and TV and in every form. If it were not that way, then we would not have freedom of the imagination and freedom of desire, and I think that freedom of imagination and desire come before even the freedom of speech.

If all of the movies are presenting women in a sexy way that men like, and somebody notices this, the thing to do isn't to try and regulate the media, or attack men who like sexy women for wanting those movies. No: The proper course of action is to write Alien. There's room enough in this world for all of the things that people like.

These are important topics. If you think you've got some better argument, I'd like to hear it. But if the work is too hard, by all means, go play. But I am calling you onto my lawn. "Get on my lawn!" I want to talk with you about important things that matter.

C'mon man. Not everything is about money.

I hear your claim, but I disagree. Just because the main character is a woman, it doesn't make it woke. Main characters are frequently surrounded by incompetents.

You could *make* it woke, if you had Ripley complaining about the men, making it about their sex. Alternatively, the male characters could be shown complaining about Ripley, making it about *her* sex. But that's not what we see -- When Ripley argues with Dallas and Ash, about the decision to bring Kane on board and the danger that represents, it's entirely a principled argument -- it's not about anybody's sex. If they were female or she were male, the argument would make just as much sense. There'd have to be some kind of gender-politics coding to it. But if there's a gender-coding to those conversations, I have a hard time seeing it. The only thing is that she is a woman. That's the sum total of it.

Captain Marvel, on the other hand -- simply doesn't make sense without direct reference to sex, which it's constantly putting front and center. That's woke.

I can't guarantee that you'll like it, but I highly encourage you to give Star Wars: Andor a try.

I would not fault you for one second for thinking, "How could it possibly be good?"

And I can't guarantee that you'll like it -- It's definitely not like Star Wars movies 4, 5, 6. It feels very different.

But I encourage you to try it and see if you like it.

I'm going to explode your mind with another fact:

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse -- **also** not Woke.

See, it's possible to make a movie that's not about white people, and ALSO *not* woke.
Take some time, and think about how that might be.

Woke means "Going out of it's way to lecture and chastise men."

For example: When you're watching a show, and the appearance of a white male character automatically means that that person is an idiot -- that's "woke." When you're watching a show, and there's a diatribe about the superiority of women and the fundamental oppressiveness of men, -- that's "woke."

It's a bad thing.

Alien & Aliens & Terminator 2: Not Woke.

Captain Marvel, Last Jedi: Woke.

Check out Andor.

Seriously -- check out Andor. It's surprising it was even put out by Disney. But it's incredible, and not like anything else they've done.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

It's not woke.

The Critical Drinker has spoken for it. It's worth investigating.

There's not one doubt in my mind that Virtual Reality is going to work.

I remember in the 1980s, there were all these people speculating that computers were a fad.

And I remember in 1993, when my nerd friends and I were in high school, talking excitedly about our experiences on the Internet. We were dialing into the public modems put up by The Armory, a geek house in Santa Cruz at the time, and from there with our SCO Unix accounts, we could talk with each other live via talk, use IRC, telnet, gopher, lynx, etc., ... We were talking about all of this, and this girl in our class overhears us, and says, "What in the world are you talking about?" And we, very excitedly, talked about how much information was available, how we had talked with and played games with people in Australia and around the world, how you could download entire programs, how you could program computers over the Internet, how were these huge usenet forums, ...

And she just listened to us for like a minute, before getting this weird look on her face, and said to us: "I'm never going to use that. I don't need no Internet. Nobody I know is ever going to do that."

That's what I hear when I hear skepticism about the Metaverse.

Now, it's true: Nobody cares about "The Information Super-highway." Everybody cares about the Internet.

And I don't care about "the Metaverse." But I know that Virtual Reality is going to be a thing.

Computers were really, really uncomfortable in 1982. I started using my mom's Compaq, in 1983, 84 -- something like that. And: Boy, it's hard to believe, but my 7 year old self figured out how to make it work. You had to boot the computer. You had to have the right disks in place. You had to know how to make backup copies. You had to know how to designate a disk writeable. You had to know about how much RAM you had. You had to know how to start BASICA. You had to know how to operate BASIC. You had to teach yourself to type -- very time consuming. With time, you'd have to know how to manually extend the RAM, you'd have to know the difference between Expanded and Extended RAM. There was a lot of stuff that -- quite honestly, most people just don't have time for.

And yet, there was also this really, really big excitement. People could imagine what it could be, and some people were really looking forward to that.

Companies, too, were all in. If there was one company I would say that -- people were sure, "This one is it. This company is going to own the future of computing" -- I think that company would have been IBM. I know that I imagined that -- come 2000, IBM would completely dominate the landscape of computers. And if it wasn't IBM, it was going to be SGI. Or Cray. Something like that.

And I remember how it was just -- there were companies of every size, big and medium and small and tiny -- It was a day in which some couple of guys, literally working out of their garages, could create some new device, some new peripheral, some new game or application, and make a meaningful contribution to the technological advancement. And it was just EXPLODING.

But, you know: You had to be there. Most people didn't care. If you didn't care, it was just this kind of oddity. It was a glorified typewriter. "Why do I have to do this on the computer, when there could be a failure, and it all just goes down the drain?" You were a computer person or you weren't, and most people weren't. They didn't see that computers had much to do with them. At a certain point, I think that people may have resigned that, "Well, I'm going to have to learn to use a computer." But it wasn't anything they were excited for. It was a physically unpleasant encounter, and they weren't nerds, and they didn't want to be nerds.

I think that -- the excitement that I see in the Virtual Reality space, and the huge number of companies getting involved, and making contributions at different levels -- it's quite amazing. And it reminds me exactly like the 1980s. The enthusiasts were really running the show, at the inter-personal level. They were holding conventions, LAN parties, and trading notes about what companies are selling what and "Oh my God have you seen this thing?" And they saw the future in their imaginations -- they could look past the great many things that **don't work,** because they saw what **did work.**

I think for *most* people, their real embrace of computers began with either (A) the Macintosh in 1984, or (B) Windows 95, in 1995. It amazes me that it took Windows about 11 years to catch up to the Macintosh, but hey, here we are, and that's how it happened. I think at that point, video games were pretty fairly rooted amongst those who cared about them, and I think that computers got to a certain "comfortable enough" point, that people who had spent 15+ years saying "no thanks" got to the point of, "Hunh, well, I guess I can deal with this..." It'd be another 5 years before it all felt firmly entrenched in most people's minds, I think. And another 7 years before Steve Jobs presented the iPhone, and people thought, "This is something really amazing."

But I remember throughout the 1980's, "This is a fad," or "It's just something nerds do." And what was the first thing the nerds were doing with computers? Computer games.

Well, I posit that 1982 Computers is 2022 Virtual Reality.

Facebook takes the role of IBM, weirdly. They say, "The future is THIS." And they're not wrong! Virtual Reality is totally going to be the future! But I don't think we can really guess who will be the "winner" in the space. I NEVER imagined that Microsoft would "win computers" the 1990s, in 1983. I mean, all they did was write an *operating system,* the thing that is in your way, until you do the thing that you *actually* are there to do. What mattered was a COMPUTER. I thought that -- it was between Compaq, IBM, Commodore (the Commodore 64 is STILL the highest-sales desktop computer model ever, in all of computing history,) or who knows, maybe Atari. Dell began in 1984, but I don't think it was on anybody's radar. I didn't think about HP until college in the mid-1990s. My point is, I think that the race is far too close to the starting line to say "who will win." I suspect that some company that hits public consciousness in 2030, but that the vast majority of us don't even know about, will begin to shape up to dominate virtual reality in the 2030s.

What I see here in 2022 Virtual Reality is that same combination of: Movies in the public sphere, over the past decade, recognizing the significance of virtual reality and working it into the background or foreground of its stories. (There were lots of movies by even the early 1980's, foreseeing that computers were going to be a big deal.) A niche of society, neophiles, exploring, without any particular training, but just really attached to the possibilities and excitement, building a network of people who keep on top of what's going on and eagerly going after it. Real businesses that sell real goods, making things and selling them, up and down the big-wig hierarchy, and exploring and contributing to the space. Also, a kind of irritated and indifferent public, that doesn't quite get it, but can't seem to quite make it go away, either. Rapid iteration in designs, with each years designs being noticeably superior to the last year's design.

Reasoning from the analogy, I expect that the following will happen:

The technology will get better and better every year. People will buy better and better headsets and peripherals for their kids. Full body tracking is available now, but it's fairly clumsy. Images are cartoonish today, and bandwidth rates are not enough. But wireless technology will continue to get better. NVidia's graphics cards will continue to push more pixels, for less. Issues that create motion sickness will, little by little, be solved. The operating system and user interface dynamics will get more and more out of the way. "It's just for the enthusiasts" will continue to be spoken, but fund advisors, military, corporations, will realize that they can work much more efficiently with these technologies as opportunities to exploit it arise. Telepresence, ways of programming in virtual reality, augmented reality systems for interacting with the real world, it's just going to gradually seep more and more into view.

I suspect that by 2035, the fundamentals of the operating system user interface will be mostly in place, and start to be usable. Also, that the equivalent of the "Internet" will hit public view. That equivalent is what Mark Zuckerberg is calling "The Metaverse" -- a kind of 3-dimensional space where people can transparently see and hear and interact with one another, in real-time, over the Internet, through virtual reality equipment. This is where you encounter people living 24/7 in the metaverse.

Now, this exists *today.* There are people today, in VRChat, who actually *live* in VRChat, 24/7. But let me remind you: The Internet *existed* in 1980, and there were people who used the Internet, *every day*, in 1980. It just was an extremely small scale thing.

"The Internet is just a fad." I remember hearing that all over the place. I had a much older friend than me, 1993, I'm guessing she was 30 at the time, a family friend, who *used* the Internet on a daily basis. "It's not going to work," she said to me, at a party. "The Internet is great, it's truly amazing, but there's no way that the infrastructure -- all of those computers out there! -- could possibly stand the load of the millions of people who would be getting on the Internet. It's just too much to compute."

I don't expect Meta to be the winner. You only get so many points, for correctly calling the future trend. Maybe it could win? But I don't know what the winning difference would come from. I don't think just being someone with the most money, AND the right view of the trend, is enough to win, either in 1982, or 2022. I don't think there's any telling who will win. But kudos to Meta for getting the right direction in mind, I think.

So, anyways, that's my picture. 2022 is 1982.

I'm so glad that someone (EditorDave, it looks like) made a story that works.

I don't know what "Belgian links" are.

When I was entering the story, I verified all of the links, repeatedly (because I made a few edits,) and when I clicked the links in the preview, they were straightforward links directly into Youtube.

After I submitted the story, the links changed to these "supported_browser" links with "next_url" clauses that don't work.

It's too bad -- I wanted to link directly to video. I don't know why that doesn't work. There may be journalistic norms that I am quite unaware of -- I'm definitely not a journalist of any stripe.

Damn, I think Slashdot just won't link to YouTube videos correctly.