[MD] Food for Thought

[Case]

[User of Case]
The Bard is being confusing again, I see. 

Case is a character I play in the game Everquest. He has an existence quite
apart from mine. He is a cartoon in a three dimensional world of Wizards and
Dragons. Over the span of his life time he has evolved in his own unique
way. He is of the race of half-elves and master of the lute and drum. He is
named for the protagonist of William Gibson's first novel The Neuromancer.
That Case was a console cowboy. In the near future hackers assume a virtual
identity in cyberspace via cortical implants. This enables them it
interaction in an almost physical way with a computer. The interface allows
direct access and manipulation of sensory input to the brain. But it also
allows the console cowboy to make changes in cyberspace. The term cyberspace
was coined by Gibson in a series of short stories in Omni Magazine published
as Burning Chrome. 

Anyway Case is commissioned to hack the Artificial Intelligence of an old
world banking empire. In the end of the novel the AI goes mad and its
personality fragments. In Gibson's second novel these fragment of AI
personality are manifest on the Internet as Voodoo Loa or Gods. So it is
tangentially ironic that I am able to ride The Bard, Case.

When I play this game I enter his world through him. I ride him in the way
Baron Samedi the God of Death rides him his followers in a Voodoo ritual. I
animate him. I see the world through his eyes and move him to and fro.

Case is a virtual being. He exists entirely in code. But he has opinions of
his own and I let Case write them here. For example, he maintains that
between his life in Norrath and his posts in the MoQ forums he leaves a far
more concrete record of his existence than to I do in the biological memory
storage units that are my family and friends and DNA.

His image is spread here and there about the internet. A 200 megabyte log of
his every act and word is stored on one of my computers. Sony has a complete
record of everything needed to reconstruct and restart Case and his entire
virtual realm of experience.

He claims he will be accessible here or there when I am dust.
I threaten to erase him and shut down his account. But he doesn't seem to
care since according to him it is already to late. He already exists and
there is nothing I could do to guarantee that his is removed.

He is just cranky that I have started a character in World of Warcraft.
While Everquest at its peak had about 300,000 players. WoW has more like 7
million. Has no one here ever played a Massively Multiplayer Online Role
Playing game?

User of Case



> [Case]
> In Norrath my user rides me. 


  "rides me"  What does that mean?

     [Case]
> I am his Avatar.


     If he/she is against you, then how can you be his
Avatar?


     [Case]
> Sometimes I post on this
> forum.

     MoQ discuss forum, right?


     [Case]
> At those times he is mine. 

     How can he be yours?  Do you mean such as in a
battle and you will win?  So, you look to argue?  I
don't know.


     [Case]
> It is often hard
> to tell which of us is
> writing

     Who is "us writing"?  Who are the "us"
specifically?


     [Case]
> and since we mostly agree, it rarely
> matters.

     Is the "we" here SA and Case?



step by tinie tiny itsie bitsie steps, night,
SA