Dartz Wrote:I would point out that, while the individuals (The Genaros Weather Team, in their spare time.) behind the Genaros metaverse had the idea way back in 2011/12 and had been working on it way back when, it wasn't publicly released until Bubblecon when a mysterious investor finally gave them the leg-up for the needed infrastructure investment.Where did the Metaverse code base come from? It seems unlikely it was totally new.
If it appears prior to 2014 Whatever the Vault is running on, is likely entirely different. It's a Metaverse, but not 'The Metaverse', which is a trademark of Genaros Blacksun PLC.
If someone wanted to be picky, they could point out that Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash" in 1992 introduced "The Metaverse", and Steve Jackson Games had a product called "The Metaverse" in 1993. Though, I might see SJ Games selling the trademark.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaverse
Could I reasonably assume that, say, Dave Mathers knows someone in the occult scene who has been experimenting for years with mind-altering techniques?
When handwavium appeared they promptly wavied-up hardware that simulated the human perceptual processing parts of the brain. Then combined this with the Croquet Project, to create an amazingly effective simulation system. Unfortunately, for this to work well a precise combination of mind altering and deeply relaxing substances were needed, or the disorientation was really unpleasant. If you didn't get it right 'spirits' manifested themselves in the system, and AIs tended to be spontaneously created. This system was called "The METAverse".
The system worked far better for AIs than humans, and an early application was to build 'what if' scenarios, maybe mixing AI and human interactions, that were watched by an AI (or a human in a suitably altered state of consciousness).
Later, the logic was reverse-engineered to used partial brain simulations, run on more conventional waved server farms, with only limited need for altered states (either the right sort of meditation, or a 'Calm Inducer' gadget, would do), and finally a 'safe' version evolved into the open game code "The Metaverse".
I could see Arthur playing with some early METAverse code, then maybe secretly sponsoring the open source game on Generos.
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"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind