“Only psychos and shamans create their own reality” - Terence McKenna

Fall, 2015.

“Hey..” a sheepish voice announced itself on the Ventrilo server. “I think this stuff is so cool. I want to learn how to make it.”

“It’s just HTML. Here’s a link to get started,” said the gruff words of a world builder, pasting a link to the W3schools website. Not exactly a welcoming statement--his models might have been crashing his system at the time, unsettling his mood. But he wasn’t wrong. It was indeed simple to make stuff.

As the conversation grew, it was apparent that this newcomer had never made a simple website. A simple mastery of HTML was a basic skill that the cadre of JanusVR world builders took for granted. I had picked it up in college. My first student website was a blue sky background with annoying animated gif files, the required “under construction” banner and a wav file of the hamster dance playing on a loop--artistically contemporary for its time.

Over the next few months I would jump onto the Ventrilo server and hear a conversation in progress over the basics of HTML and polygon counts. My attention would divert to the latest webspace I was working on. I was glad someone was helping, but I had work to do, and web development wasn’t exactly my day job—I was in no position to tutor. The conversations were placed in the back of my mind like a distant office chat. Then there was a series of links pasted in the chat. That was followed by urging from this person to check out what they’ve done.

Workspaces in JanusVR. A place to develop your works in progress before uploading.

I exited out of my VR workspace where I was going back and forth from Virtual Desktop editing locally before uploading my work. I made my way to the main portal and then to the lobby where a few other users were gathered. I clicked on the portal that had been created next to the fountain in the center of the room. When you would do this in JanusVR it would send a request to the server where the website was hosted to fetch the necessary data to build the space. Then it took some time to load the majority of it into memory, at least enough for you to enter and explore. The loading bar took a long time on this one, but I waited patiently. Eventually, a foyer came into view. In the center of it was a face that cycled through various colors almost like a neon sign. The walls were covered in bright animated gifs that looped eternally. The themes seemed to cover a gamut from natural awe, to spiritualism, to encouragement of taking psychedelics. Next to these were the author’s face in various decoration. To me it was alien. The gender was ambiguous. Remember, I’m a veteran, and my customers are typically church-going simulator operators and highly dependable, albeit, predictable and sober engineers. My social circle wasn’t much different. I had stepped into a realm of the strange. Like a drag dinner show I was surprised with for a birthday gag while on leave in San Francisco years back, I took this new experience just as light heartedly. I rounded the corner and saw a 3D model of a face scanned by photogrammetry rotating on a pedestal. The eyes were completely black with special contact lenses. The face was adorned with makeup and tattoos. This was most definitely someone I would never encounter in my sleepy seaside village in Florida.

I looked at every corner of this space. I even hit the hover button and floated around a bit to take in every meticulous detail that was added to this place. This was one of the reasons this room took so long to download and populate in VR. The other was that this novice had yet to learn the art of optimization to reduce bandwidth. As I ventured deeper into the snaking space, I saw other portals that were branching off into other webspaces. I held off investigating them until I reached the end of this space. Around a blind corner I saw a wall with a parental warning. Cleverly, the builder put a false wall there. The collision logic was turned off--you could pass right through it like a hologram. Oh. I’m intrigued. That’s a use of virtual space I hadn’t considered! Being at the end of the space, I went back to the beginning to investigate the portals. A few were dead links. They defaulted to the virtual equivalent of an “Error 404” Others were much larger in size than the central hub I had first entered. One was a large forest at night, with a campfire hidden among the trees. Around the campfire was a flying saucer and colorful pieces of art cycling through their animated gif textures. I worked my way through these webspaces, returning to the hub to open the next portal. I made it near the end of the hallway where there was a portal to what looked like a bar. I entered and found myself on a street in Toronto. The surroundings were a 360 photosphere. The building that was of interest was lined up with the photo. A staircase led down to a dance club that was industrial in theme. It was a faithful, but simple reproduction. Instead of a wall of liquor bottles behind a bar, a stock photo of a repeating pattern of bottles did the trick. The main impression that the size and orientation were mostly correct. As I walked through the empty venue, I saw pictures floating about showing people in full goth regalia. I imagined these were friends of the author. From the smiles, it seemed like they had some fun nights.

Descending the steps to Techn0’s favorite and no longer existing bar.

Upon returning to the main hub, I saw the author’s avatar. We greeted each other via the built in voice method in the world. Then we decided to switch to Ventrilo. While the in-world speech engine worked fine, it faded over distance as speech naturally would the further you stepped away. Not many people had the patience to traverse webspaces at human speeds. Often you would only hear half a sentence before they would zoom out of sight. Ventrilo, which would later be replaced by Mumble, and eventually Discord, operated more like a satellite radio, allowing you to talk to anyone as long as they were in the same channel. It also had another purpose. If you have been reading this blog since the first post, I used a second computer for communication. JanusVR was prone to crashes, especially if you were like many users are using the bleeding edge build. You never knew what would kick it off. Adventuring into a new webspace was novel data for the engine to crunch on. Crashes were often expected.

This was the first trans person I had ever met. I confessed it was new territory for me, and that my brain might not have the plasticity to keep up with the pronouns. He said to use whatever I like, just to keep being nice about it. And so in this post, I’m going to do the same. I’m not stopping at transsexual. This person was transhumanist. There were some concepts I felt were truly alien to me, but I was going to find that the use of immersive technology could convey information in a more direct way.

He went by the handle “techn0shaman”. The moniker fit the webspaces that he built. They were all mixtures of spirituality and technology; some of that technology being biological in nature.

I showed him my webspaces that I had been building. They were mostly demonstrations of my JavaScript prowess--interactive places that showcased hand tracking. Others were exhibits for the services my work provided. Compared to the techn0shaman, my creations were steeped in utility and lacked the creativity and reflection he brought to bear.

Techn0 brought me to a very interesting webspace that forced you to contemplate. You entered on a shore where you had to cross a narrow bridge to an island. Haunting sounds of birds and monkeys made you feel you were in a deep jungle. On the island were images that were inspired by Hinduism and Buddhism. These icons led you up a ramp to a black pyramid. Inside the dome was a “ghost recording” of Techn0 pacing around the pyramid. Along the walls were more images, and among them was Techn0’s real name and his birthdate. He explained that this was a digital fragment of himself that will continue to live on in the metaverse as long as the data is hosted. I believe he used IPFS, a distributed method of cloud storage, to host the ghost recording, so it possibly could. Techn0 thought a lot about how he could be more than what limited him in his mortal coil. He entertained thoughts of the singularity, and augmenting his body with technology as it became available. This metaverse was just a first step.

Me admiring that instead of modeling a fish tank, Techn0 put four animated gifs on planes together.

Techn0shaman became one of the most prolific worldbuilders. I learned that he liked to hide content, usually in places that were tricks of the eye--a gap in a rock face camouflaged with repeating textures, for example. I eventually went behind the false wall hiding mature content--I admired his daring to share unabashedly. I also found a vent that wasn’t readily visible. If you flew up to the top of it you could find more portals to webspaces. He had recreated his childhood home to scale. Photographs were placed exactly where they were taken, filling in the details. Smiling family faces looked back at me as I stood in a simple space. There was a dissonance growing in my mind. I wasn’t learning all the details about Techn0shaman as one would in memoir or biography. I was getting the feeling of his life, the sentiment. I started to know this person, at least what he was showing the world, very well. But it wasn’t a knowing of life events and history. It was attitude, fears, and hopes. This became evident to me as I stood on the balcony of his “someday” luxury hi-rise apartment in downtown Toronto.

This is the story of how VR brought together a transsexual woman from Toronto and a former special operations veteran from Florida to friendship. If Virtual Reality can achieve something like that, imagine what other chasms it could breach if used properly.

I’m glad we followed his advice. I found an other.

Session 4: The Mind Palace

Daniel D Meeks 2020