This show is an example of what I meant by “efficient lean storytelling”
It is almost unbearably efficient. Like pure cocaine. The Hollywood beat-formula machine at its most finely tuned operating on extremely native material.
This show is the most complete and thorough reboot/continuation I’ve ever seen. All the character arcs and unresolved tensions seamlessly continued. The introduction of the Terry Silver character is so smooth it’s like there was no 30-year gap.
The show also revels in extreme symmetries. I take your student, you take mine, etc etc. Episode 5 is almost group-theoretic.
One of the things I like is how the show sets up initially as a realistic middle-aged drama but it’s a head-fake. Rapidly returns to archetypal cartoon morality play format with a streak of silliness that made the original so good. The “reality” layer is just played for laughs
It’s like the Nolan Batman relative to Tim Burton but in reverse. Ironic realism or something. Nudge nudge wink wink, we all know reality is fake and the archetype cartoon is the red pill layer.
By analogy to “Big Data is when it’s cheaper to store data than decide what to do with it,” (George Dyson)
you could say
“Big Frontier is when it’s cheaper to experiment with something than determine if it’s a scam”
It’s the flip side of brandolini bullshit asymmetry principle: takes 10x effort to refute it than produce it. The solution is to not try: just cap downsides of buying into bullshit and let the upside from legit things swamp it out.
The biggest risk in civilizational cores is being scammed. The biggest risk in frontiers is not playing.
Has anyone experimented with barter nfts? I borrow a cup of sugar from neighbor and issue him a “cup of sugar nft” … solves dual coincidence of needs problems without a fungible currency. Crypto-hardened IOUs.
Solving for neighborhood favor trading liquidity and market-making, not enforceability. Enforcement is always solved with either guns or mutuality (aka iterated prisoners dilemma)
VR/AR people… is there a term for the virtual material out of which virtual environments can be said to be built? Like with atoms I’d say “wall of concrete” … I’d say”wall of X”?
If not we should make up a term.
I propose renderium or rendrial or rendril…
In-illusion term, not an illusion-breaking term like mesh.
Not voxels either. No terms pointing to an out-of-illusion design process or tools. If you bought virtual girders at a metaverse store to virtually build something in-world, what would the store call it generally? You can specify further… renderium steel, renderium wool