Comments on: Virtual Reality Comes to the Web — Maybe for Real This Time . . . https://habitablezone.com/2014/12/30/virtual-reality-comes-to-the-web-maybe-for-real-this-time/ Fri, 03 Apr 2026 22:41:18 -0700 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: hank https://habitablezone.com/2014/12/30/virtual-reality-comes-to-the-web-maybe-for-real-this-time/#comment-32169 hank Wed, 31 Dec 2014 03:22:49 +0000 https://www.habitablezone.com/?p=48485#comment-32169 The geek-industrial marketing complex is on the verge of bringing virtual reality technology to our living rooms, but it can't protect our commercial transactions and private data from vandalism, domestic criminals, and foreign enemies. Our infrastructure, public utilities, banking, livelihoods and life savings are threatened by pimply generation x'ers, fanatic Muslim terrorists and Korean Commie hackers reading our mail and bringing down our largest corporations. Every aspect of our lives is being co-opted by this technology and we are in danger of losing control of the management of our economy, national defense, communications public utilities and financial institutions. And why? So our corporate establishment can save a bit on administrative costs? So I can pay my bills online (or even better, have them automatically deducted from my bank account)? So I can execute an app that tells me where the nearest pizza joint is located, even if I'm not hungry? This pathetic reliance and adulation of technology is accomplishing little but turning over control of the day-to-day management of our most intimate and vital human and societal systems to machines and software procedures that are essentially out of our control, or are dominated by corporate greed, soulless government bureaucracies, sinister foreign tyrannical conspirators determined to destroy us as a nation or teen-age vandals and bunko artists. When I log on to my bank account and find out some hacker in Iran has wiped it out I am not going to give a a shit if we now have the ability to do virtual reality videogames on the web. And I'm not very likely to want to go on the internet to find and pay some firm ready to sell me a subscription to software that will protect me from further attacks and theft. I really do believe I am entitled to protection from attack and theft for free. Maybe hackers are not just vandals, maybe they are performing a valuable public service by making it impractical, even impossible, for this technology to insinuate itself into every aspect of the management and administration of our civilization. We cannot turn over control of human communication to machines, businessmen, governments, myopic techies, hobbyists and criminals. They simply do not care for us. The geek-industrial marketing complex is on the verge of bringing virtual reality technology to our living rooms, but it can’t protect our commercial transactions and private data from vandalism, domestic criminals, and foreign enemies. Our infrastructure, public utilities, banking, livelihoods and life savings are threatened by pimply generation x’ers, fanatic Muslim terrorists and Korean Commie hackers reading our mail and bringing down our largest corporations. Every aspect of our lives is being co-opted by this technology and we are in danger of losing control of the management of our economy, national defense, communications public utilities and financial institutions. And why? So our corporate establishment can save a bit on administrative costs? So I can pay my bills online (or even better, have them automatically deducted from my bank account)? So I can execute an app that tells me where the nearest pizza joint is located, even if I’m not hungry?

This pathetic reliance and adulation of technology is accomplishing little but turning over control of the day-to-day management of our most intimate and vital human and societal systems to machines and software procedures that are essentially out of our control, or are dominated by corporate greed, soulless government bureaucracies, sinister foreign tyrannical conspirators determined to destroy us as a nation or teen-age vandals and bunko artists.

When I log on to my bank account and find out some hacker in Iran has wiped it out I am not going to give a a shit if we now have the ability to do virtual reality videogames on the web. And I’m not very likely to want to go on the internet to find and pay some firm ready to sell me a subscription to software that will protect me from further attacks and theft. I really do believe I am entitled to protection from attack and theft for free.

Maybe hackers are not just vandals, maybe they are performing a valuable public service by making it impractical, even impossible, for this technology to insinuate itself into every aspect of the management and administration of our civilization. We cannot turn over control of human communication to machines, businessmen, governments, myopic techies, hobbyists and criminals. They simply do not care for us.

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