When I hear people talk about how amazing it is to see through virtual reality goggles, I can’t help but be shocked.
I can see with my own eyes much better detailed qualities and resolutions without the need for these devices. When we say this, the defenders of “virtual” think you are just a hater of the scene.
I consider myself and have always considered myself a fan of the metaverse world and that is why I am not easily seduced by any screen within centimetres of my eye. In fact, I find it annoying and I dislike it enormously as the minutes go by, from heat, tiredness, weight on the neck, eyestrain…
Sometimes it is confusing to explain what the metaverse is for oneself and today I wanted to bring you this series that although it has ideas and touches of other existing series and films, it brings us in an updated way what could be our future and how we could live it with different peripherals that DO have magic.
Flynne Fisher seguro que os trae viejos recuerdos o incluso esta escena de aquí arriba os resulta familiar…
The connections begin when the new gadget that a Colombian consortium wants Flynne and her brother, Burton (Jack Reynor), to try out appears, as if they were players in a simulation. This device connects the player to the peripheral body, similar to the host robots in Westworld.
Neo in the Matrix is connected through this interface, which consists of a series of wires and sensors that connect directly to his nervous system, allowing his mind to interact with the virtual reality of the Matrix as if it were the real world. Very similar, right? There is one small difference to note, and that is that in the Matrix, if you die, you die out, whereas in The Peripheral, it seems that it only causes some chronic sequelae due to the persistent neural synchrony.
But there is much more, much more. Of course, The Peripheral is a much more recent series. I want this article to help you identify what is to come or what is already here. Yes, we are going to see it.
Unlike the glasses that we know in our life, these are (as you can see) much lighter, smaller, more comfortable, and ergonomic.
Additionally, the synchronicity is absolute, along with a very, very small mousepad, much more than a Nintendo DS. When you enter these worlds, the hyperrealism is simply amazing. You are literally in another skin, but …. YOU ARE AWARE THAT IT IS A SIMULATION.
This is where a very particular term called “haptic drift” comes in:
“Haptic drift refers to the phenomenon of sensing the touch of another person through an electronic device”.
This one you see here is Flynne, well yes, well no, it’s not. It’s actually her peripheral, or also called “avatar,” in the form of a cyborg that users can connect to from another location via the quantum server. The difference here is that it’s no longer a simulation, but rather a transfer of consciousness in its entirety (I don’t want to give too many details to avoid spoilers – let’s focus on the technologies).
In one of the scenes, something peculiar occurs: a few vehicles vanish through apparent magic.
But, is it really magic? Rather, they employ a technology that renders the items invisible by conceivably absorbing certain radiations. At this point, I append an article that verifies the existence, invention or development of this technology and indicates that it is a type of technology that many governments would like to keep classified, especially within the military sector.
This is the shop where Flynne works and just behind it is a 3D printer farm. Here you can go and order something as simple as what Flynne is holding in her hand, a doll for a wedding cake fully customised with the future husband’s face. They could also be used for more complex things like weapon parts, custom gears for a device or anything 3D with your own design that you can carry on a USB stick, for example.
Of course, there is also the intervention of fighter drones, both on the attacking and defending sides (the ones you see in the picture), with a notable difference: the defending ones have haptic technology grafted onto their skins and can synchronize with each other, even synchronizing the drone’s vision with their own eyes in unison.
As if that wasn’t enough, this synchronization allows them to have other advantages that I won’t reveal.
We will also find robots, service robots, defence robots, autonomous robots with responsibilities such as being police officers or piloting vehicles as chauffeurs.
The truth is that they are quite strange, some have a face and some do not. But their face is like a screen and you can ask them to be represented by someone you know, like a family member.
This other character, who you will know if you have seen or are going to see the series, has a very special “wheelchair”. It’s not just a chair, it’s a motorbike, armed and it also has a disengagement zone where this motorbike brakes and the character is at the mercy of a wheel (the rear one) and he moves with it. It is worth noting that he is missing both legs from the knee down and it seems that gravity plays a good role here.
Although I can’t show you pictures of some of the sequences, there are other very interesting things in the series, including the two mind synchronisation where you can see through your eyes what you are seeing at the same time as what the other person sees synchronously. The vision is similar to a two-player game on a console where the screen is split into two. But not only that, you can establish neural connections with a set of commands via your fingertips as well as a noise-cancellation mode to cancel out the noise around you when you make contact with the other person.
There are also visual isolation modes, where invisible cloaks pick you and your companion up where you are, or the automatic disintegration and reconstruction of a brick wall.
Having said all this, I will be moving on to more fascinating things in the next few articles. I encourage you to follow my newsletter as there will be plenty of artificial intelligence, metaverse, transhumanism and other spectacular or literally captivating topics.
See you in the future,
John Fernandez.
