thinkofnothing

I'm one of those Asian-Americans that applied to only "elite" schools due to constant parental pressure and did "enough" to get accepted to most. Although all this happened a decade ago, the challenges these days seem mostly the same, if not trite, in the sense that Asians seem to typically over-value institutionalized education and focus on a narrow set of activities for whatever cultural reason ... leading to racial bias from colleges and conventional life choices from Asians.

For me though, I just enjoyed trying a bunch of different stuff out and was fortunate enough to excel at a variety of things that I guess these colleges weren't expecting from an Asian. These interests include(d) linguistics, journalism, public speaking, student government, graphics + layouts + grids, game design, acrobatics, and somehow even ended up as an Eagle Scout (shrug) ... on top of hyper-accelerated math, science and tech stuff expected I guess of Asian students. Didn't sleep much though.

Also, after attending one day of Harvard's Campus Preview Weekend, my gut said "uh ... no," and went to MIT instead. Very happy about that choice in hindsight, purely based on the people I met and the meritocracy instilled in the students; I doubt I use even 25% of course material in the stuff I work on these days. The most important lesson that I did learn at the end of the day is that general society is led to believe that people should/can master only one or two tasks, a possible relic from industrialism. Instead, people should aim to become polymathic, which becomes exponentially easier by learning across diverse interests and realizing that there are many common threads across seemingly different fields -- a personal and particular implementation of "learning how to learn."

* As a side note, San Gabriel Valley? Never been so can't really guess, but I would bet that Cupertino schools were much tougher. Thankfully, we had a certain neighborhood fruit company that inspired some of us to become pirates instead of joining the navy, and to experiment with Learning Some Divinity (eventually).

1. When in doubt, get a testing kit from dancesafe.org and test a sample. This has saved me on a few separate occasions, as 2-C's get passed around as a cheap substitute.

2-4. The past and present purveyors of L treat the substance as sacred. Even though the laboratory synthesis of LSD is rather difficult, it's still rarely sold and usually gifted to fortunate or lost individuals.

Fashion runs as a top-down economy. Most of the high-end designers are the ones driving innovation, and other designers/large corps soon imitate these styles a few years later for lower prices.

In comparison to a future where ominous mind control is possible through AR/VR, or a virus is created that not only renders you a vegetable but also transcends virtual reality (and is wielded by a vengeful psychopath that has an atomic bomb attached to him that triggers upon his death), or basically any other classic cyberpunk dystopia, I think it's fair to describe Ready Player One's Easter Egg hunt as Disney-esque... almost like comparing Aladdin to 1984.

But since we're nitpicking anyway, "the main company" you're speaking of had nothing to do with the creation of OASIS; that was simply an external multinational corporation that controlled the global ISP and sought to gain control of the virtual world by finding some treasure left by the initial creator.

More importantly however, my main point is that Oculus's position now is more along the lines of the evil mega-corp owner in Snow Crash, who monopolized (and was probably the first to commoditize) the optical framework with which to access the virtual world. This form of dinosaur-seeks-survival-through-any-means-necessary scenario is not only plausible, but I believe that Stephenson meant it as a prophetic warning for those who are responsible in bringing about the virtual age.

And given the sudden shift in Oculus PR's public citations of sci-fi influences, I suspect that they realize that in context to Stephenson's novel, they are actually starting to walk down the path of the evil dictator, not the benevolent enlightened one.

In any case, I firmly believe that our virtual world should be ushered in as decentralized and hacker-friendly as possible. Open-sourced with a blockchain perhaps, and localized open-sourced hardware to boot.

Highly doubtful, unless you're sarcastically implying that FB's implementation will end up as a Disney-esque world that's obsessed about a generation long past and of little relevance 60 years in the future. If so, you might be onto something.

Ready Player One was a fun read but ultimately a Willy Wonka type of story - impractical and its explanations of the actual VR implementation were questionable at best (or omitted entirely? I don't remember exactly, since my only impression at the time was that it was trivial).

For better ideas on how a virtual world could work, including reasonable hard science to back up claims, read Snow Crash (Stephenson), True Names (Vinge), or Rainbow's End (Vinge) instead. After that, you will quickly realize why many VR purists absolutely detest Oculus's acquisition.

As a side note, I distinctly remember Oculus PR in the past claiming they were "building the Metaverse" a la Snow Crash, but I guess they quickly jumped ship to Ready Player One's image instead. Makes sense, seeing as how spoiler alert the fictional monopoly that develops optical hardware in Snow Crash ends up completely corrupt and a perfect example of Schumpeter's classic theories on economics and innovation. I guess Oculus pictures their future selves to be enlightened, benevolent multibillionaires like Og in Ready Player One. Unfortunately, with FB in the mix and the choices Oculus has made, seems like Stephenson's vision is much much more relevant.

I distinctly remember Oculus's hiring page once touting "Help us build the Metaverse!"

Then they turn around and blatantly disregard one of Stephenson's most fundamental virtues/warnings from the novel (don't want to spoil it for anyone, but yea, eerily similar to joining L. Bob Rife). Straight PR garbage. And a slap to the face for anyone who actually believed them.

I can't remember the last piece of tech news that made me so disappointed.