Rose and Katje both called me this week to chat and drop hints about bringing their families over to my place in Great Falls, Virginia for Sunday dinner. Their motives were different, of course. Katje’s husband, my dear younger brother Rob Roy, wants to hang out at my place this weekend and next so he and their son Jason can watch the NCAA tournament on the truly bodacious oversized HDTV in the game room downstairs while availing themselves of the collection of twenty different brands of designer beers I happen to keep stored there in a jumbo glass door bar cooler. Rose, on the other hand, stuck out there in the wilds of Fairfax with her brother-in-law Arthur and both of their humongous broods of children, and her oldest son Hank Jr. and a female guest visiting down here in DC on spring break from Brown to boot, was simply running out of money at the end of the month, as she and Arthur often do, and needed to bring the kids over to my place so everybody can eat until Rose’s and Arthur’s next direct deposits hit their bank accounts.
I usually prepare Sunday dinner, but this time, I was exhausted from working twelve and fourteen hours six days a week, so I just said to hell with it and called the caterer. Naturally, I invited Cerise; and, as I usually do, Veronica also, who uncharacteristically accepted this time, having, very uncharacteristically, no Beltway sugar daddy to run around with this weekend. Or maybe she was exhausted too, in her own way.
Managing all those kids Arthur and Rose bring with them every time was certainly easier – and quieter – than usual with four women to do it, and the caterer’s courses included vegan specialties for Katje, along with a nice selection of glatt kosher Long Island duck a l’orange, roasted Colorado mountain meadow lamb shanks, Devonshire cream raised veal cheeks, grass fed Montana prime rib, wild Scottish pheasant, locally sourced Chesapeake rockfish, Chincoteague oysters and free range New Zealand glacial highland venison. Surprisingly, quite a few of the older children – and a couple of tykes, for that matter – opted for one of those instead of organic brats, bison burgers and the caterer’s gourmet version of mac and cheese.
Things were going splendidly at the adults’ table, accompanied by several bottles of 2010 Château Gruaud Larose St. Émilion and Château La Tour-Martillac Blanc, until Jason and Rob Roy got into an argument.
“Oculus is Palmer Luckey’s company,” Rob ostentatiously pontificated to his crimsonly angered offspring, “and even if he wants to sell it to Satan Himself, that’s his prerogative.”
“Not after I gave that lying, thieving, two-faced, back-stabbing, [expletive]-sucking, [expletive]-eating son of a [expletive] eleven hundred and fifty [expletive] dollars of my [expletive] money, it isn’t!” Jason exploded.
“Exactly,” Rob shot back, “you gave it to him – on Kickstarter. You got a T-shirt, didn’t you?”
“I burned that [expletive] T-shirt in the [expletive] fireplace yesterday!” Jason shouted. “And I only regret I didn’t have Luckey’s stinking, sweaty pair of [expletive] to throw in there with it!”
“What’s an ‘oculus,’ dear?” Cerise inquired of me with a polite smile obviously intended to remind Jason that there were children in the next room, combined with a discreet glance at Katje to remind her that Jason really should have been raised a bit better. Not that Katje didn’t try her best – I should know because I was there – but she and Rob had Jason when they were both fourteen years old, as frequent readers of this Web log are also no doubt also aware, so what can one expect?
“A virtual reality headset,” I explained. “State of the art, by most accounts.”
“And what happened?” Veronica wondered, “I mean, I assume this Palmer guy, whoever he is, didn’t actually sell this oculus gizmo to the Devil.”
“Pretty close,” Katje interjected. “He sold it to Facebook.”
“For two billion dollars!” Jason fumed.
“When did he do that?” Rose asked.
“Last Tuesday,” I told her.
“What’s… ‘virtual reality?’” Arthur stammered, clearly nonplussed.
“I’d say, it’s direct, personal computer-generated experience,” Hank Jr. offered. “You can visit fantasy places, just like people do in World of Warcraft – you’ve heard of that, right?”
“Um… yeah,” Arthur nodded. “I think I read about it in Time magazine.”
“Well,” Jason averred, “Oculus is sort of like playing WOW, but you’re not just sitting there, staring at a screen…”
“That’s right,” Katje interrupted, “you’re not. Instead, you’re sitting there with this… thing… strapped to your face.”
“Strapped to your face?” Arthur shuddered. “What are you talking about? Sounds like a scene out of one of those Alien movies or something.”
“It’s a headset,” Rob explained with a distinct note of irritation. “It goes in front of your eyes. Then, what you see is a three-dimensional, computer-generated virtual world.”
“Instead of the real world?” Arthur knit his brow, mystified. “What’s so bad about the real world you want to replace it with a fake one made up in a computer?”
“There are a lot of practical applications besides electronic gaming,” I noted. “Virtual reality could be used to tour ancient cities, to directly view chemical reactions and structures on a molecular scale, to visit the surface of Mars, to fly over the Himalayas, to explore objects which exist only in higher mathematical dimensions, to adopt the perspective of a planktonic organism in an aquatic ecosystem, to allow medical students to dissect virtual cadavers…”
“Tom!” Veronica complained. “Virtual cadavers? Do you mind? We’re trying to eat Sunday dinner here.”
“Oh, my bad,” I apologized. “Thinking about the potential of new technologies gets me carried away sometimes. In any event, practical VR would be a very powerful scientific, engineering, training, educational and design tool, and not simply limited to flying around on unicorns hunting down dragons in Middle Earth or whatever.”
“Serious VR gaming,” Jason objected, “is not about flying around on unicorns hunting down dragons in Middle Earth!”
“Oh no?” Hank Jr. challenged, taking a deep swig of St. Émilion and adopting his best Ivy League debating team manner, “then what, pray tell, is serious VR gaming about – a more intense and immersive Grand Theft Auto, perhaps, where it’s like you’re right there, kicking that hooker in the face with your very own boot? Or maybe it’s the ultimate first-person shooter, with virtual blood and guts splattered all over your avatar?”
“Hank Junior!” Veronica snapped, indicating her plate. “Sunday dinner, okay?”
“Just asking,” Hank Jr. shrugged, returning to his venison with renewed gusto.
“Actually,” I related, “what they’ve been saying since last Tuesday is that Zuckerberg wants to get everyone playing Farmville in 3D. But I’m pretty sure only some of them are serious.”
“Well,” Cerise philosophized, “I’m sure virtual reality is like any other advanced technology, such as nuclear energy or recombinant DNA, with enormous potential for good and evil applications alike. What matters is how the it’s applied and by whom.”
“Absolutely!” Jason proclaimed. “You got it right there, Cerise – who controls that technology? And the problem is that now, VR technology, in the hands of Mark Zuckerberg, is going to be like nuclear technology in the hands of Kim Jong-il!”
“Kim Jong-il,” I pointed out, “is dead. You mean Kim Jong-un.”
“Pick whatever Kim you want,” Jason sneered after a respectable quaff of Martillac Blanc, “I stand by my analogy – Zuckerberg’s going to use VR to steal everybody’s personal information and whore it out to multinational corporations and then leave it lying around for amoral government spies to steal!”
“In that case,” Rob Roy goaded, “why do you want Facebook to give you and the rest of the trusting, guileless rubes who Palmer Luckey fleeced a piece of the action?”
“Not that I can speak for all of the Kickstarter backers, by any means,” Jason snarled, “but as far as I’m concerned, I don’t want to get my beak wet at Zuckerberg’s bird bath, ‘cause you don’t have to be a genius to figure out he’s going to take a great big thundering [expletive] in it first…”
Veronica rolled her eyes. “Jason, pu-leeeze…”
“Oh, sorry, Veronica,” he persisted, “but there’s really no other way to describe how angry I am – or how angry a lot of Kickstarter backers are about this.”
“Angry enough, the media have said, ” I observed, “to issue death threats against Luckey and his family.”
“Well,” Jason parried, throwing his hands up with symbolic resignation, “I draw the line at killing the bastard, naturally, and of course I think they ought to leave his family out of it. But I wouldn’t mind having five minutes in a locked room with that [expletive]-hole and baseball bat!”
“Jason Martini!” Kate admonished. “I don’t care if you are half Italian, no son of mine talks about committing physical violence with a baseball bat to collect money!”
“It seems to me,” I intervened, “the adverse publicity is worth more than the what – two and half million dollars Luckey collected on Kickstarter?”
“Yeah,” Jason muttered, “that’s about right.”
“Two or three million dollars,” I proposed, “is pure chump change to Facebook. It seems to me, Zuckerberg could buy an awful lot of good will for such a relatively paltry sum.”
“Wait a minute, I’m not any taking money from a [expletive] like Zuckerberg,” Jason declared, “I want the eleven hundred and fifty bucks I contributed to it in Kickstarter refunded to me directly from Oculus!”
“It’s all Zuckerberg’s money now, son,” Rob Roy chuckled. “And like they say on Mulberry Street between Lafayette and the Bowery, ‘Stugats, paisan, fuhgeddaboudit.’”
“No, you’re wrong,” Jason proclaimed defiantly. “You go on Kickstarter and ask for backing, that doesn’t make Kickstarter your private vehicle for your personal enrichment!”
“Says who?” Rob teased.
“Says me!” Jason insisted. “That scumbag Luckey went on Kickstarter in 2012 and said he wanted to create ‘a next-generation project designed for gamers, by gamers.’ That was the vision – that was the promise, and over nine thousand of us put up the bucks for that dream to become reality!”
“Looks like,” Rob needled, “your reality became kind of… virtual, like I told you it would. So face it, kid, there’s nothing you can do.”
“Oh yeah, there is!” Jason stormed. “I can cancel my pre-order for an Oculus Rift!”
“You mean,” Rob japed, “you haven’t already done that?”
“I was just waiting,” Jason gravely intoned, his voice about to crack, “to see if the whole thing wasn’t some kind of… hoax or something.”
“Denial,” Rob chortled with obvious self-satisfaction, “ain’t just a river in Egypt, kid.”
“Yeah,” Jason choked out slowly, “I know. So right after I cancel that order, I’m going on Kickstarter to organize a gamer community project to develop a totally open-source alternative to Oculus!”
“Great idea,” Katje vouched.
“Good for you,” Rose encouraged.
“That’s the stuff,” Cerise agreed.
“Awesome, dude!” Hank Jr. enthused.
“Well, at least he’s making acceptable dinner table conversation now,” Veronica sniffed.
Arthur looked around the table with a decidedly puzzled expression. “Is the world really going to need two of those things?”
“Maybe, maybe not,” I conceded, “but one thing’s for sure – competition always benefits the consuming public.”
“The consuming public?” Arthur fretted. “Oh boy. So it’s inevitable then, everybody’s going to be wearing those things strapped to their faces? You figure doing that is going to replace television?”
“It very well could,” I speculated.
Arthur considered my statement carefully for a moment. “It’s not going to have… smells… is it?”
“No,” I assured him, “computers can’t do that. Not yet, anyway.”
“Thank God for small favors,” Arthur sighed as he took the last bite of his roasted lamb shank. “What’s for dessert?”