Female Rollercoasters: (And Other Virtual Vortices)

FemaleRollercoasters (And Other Virtual Vortices) Joseph Lanza The Female Rollercoaster! A cybernetic marvel guaranteed to shock your senses! Sleek, seductive, compact, portable. No hazards, no friction, no fuss. Just pure sensation titillating your synapses-all from the luxury of a fetal comfort station that sucks you into an antigravity vortex. Travel into a time-space warp. Swim through your own birth canal and even be the woman giving birth to yourself. The thrill ride of the future is with us today. Let her entertain you! WHILE AN ACTUAL Female Rollercoaster has yet to surface, the technology necessary to make one already thrives. Thanks to advances in Cyberspace or "Virtual Reality," we can enjoy an array of high-tech, gravity-defying and space enhancing spectacles which do everything the female rollercoaster does and perhaps more. Virtual Reality-an amalgam of cybernetics, aeronautics, new age hooliganism and applied science-fiction-uses personal computers, fiberoptics , and full-motion 3D to produce a "computerized clothing" that we can drape over our sense organs. This allows us to participate in simulated or "virtual" worlds that interface slick, on-line graphics with our overactive imaginations. Special effects usually confined to the stage, cinema, or theme park can be transplanted into a stereovideo sensorium. Our central nervous system is tricked into perceiving the synaptic thaumaturgy as "real." In recent years, technophiles, mystagogues and leisure marketeers 51 of all ideologies, sizes and stripes have been touting the wonders of this new "interactive" discovery which promises to add all of the adventure, magic, and sensuality now drained from our daily lives. Most intriguing is Virtual Reality's potential to link the "serious" professions with entertainment culture. Surgeons can reportedly convert a patient 's simulated CAT Scan into a stage where they can rehearse the removal of a brain tumor. Wall Street speculators can discuss stock market mood swings while taking virtual rollercoaster rides along a jagged Dow Jones index. Architects can walk inside of a simulated building before erecting it. Newlyweds will be able to re-arrange household appliances in virtual kitchens before buying a home. Astronauts can project themselves as cartoon figures groping at lunar objects while staying on Earth. Already, such musicians, dramatists, and performance artists as Brian Eno, Peter Gabriel, and Laurie Anderson have proposed shows with virtual, computer-generated characters, dancers, and composers. An audio-physiologist from Stanford University has collaborated with an electronics engineer to produce a "Biomuse" which performs music through muscular gestures, eye movements, and brain waves. And, of course sex (entertainment culture's lowest common denominator) also enters the picture with such inventions as virtual vixens who can out-maneuver any whore confined to mundane time and space. There is talk of a coming feature film called A Man and a Woman and a Woman in which two lovers unite inside of a Virtual Reality station. Cyberspace has materialized in Time, Newsweek, Omni and The New York Times. A Wall Street Journalheadline dubbed it "electronic LSD." Cyber-cliques starting in such cult craters as San Francisco and Silicon Valley are spreading across the land. Mattel, Inc. was so impressed that it incorporated a primitive version of the technology into one of its Nintendo games. The main Virtual Reality CEO is himself a former video game designer named Jaron Lanier who heads his VPL (Virtual Programming Languages) Research, Inc. in Redwood City, California. Committed to bringing virtual technology to the everyday workplace, game arcade, amusement park, and living room, Lanier has developed an impressive enough resum6 to attract such clients as Pacific Bell, Apple Computer, and NASA. Among Lanier's magical tools are EyePhones and a black lycra DataGlove with attached fiber-optic sensors. The EyePhone (with built in stereo headphones to complement the 3D images) is essentially two liquid crystal display monitors small enough to stimulate each retina. Attached to the goggles is a sensor that detects the direction your head is going. Each computer image generates approximately every 20th of a second at a 52 slightly different angle, shifting to the motion and range of the head and eye. If you hold your DataGloved hand in front of your EyePhoned face, you can witness a virtual hand reaching out to...