Plowing the Dark

Work Title: Plowing the Dark
Medium: Novel
Episode Title:
Year: 2000
Writer(s): Richard Powers
"Original" Writer: Yes Own work?: No
Summary:

By Richard Powers; "No one who enjoyed Richard Powers's remarkable breakthrough novel, Galatea 2.2, will be surprised that he has returned to the richly promising realm of cyber-invention, one of our age's few remaining frontiers and a siren call to restless intellects. In Plowing the Dark, an old friend recruits a disillusioned New York artist named Adie Klarpol to work on "the Cavern." TeraSys, a Seattle-based company, is building this virtual environment at great expense in the hope that it will lower its enormous tax liability as well as, in the long run, provide the template for all such virtual playrooms. "Millions of dollars of funding," Adie's friend Steve tells her when she arrives on the job, "and nobody around this dump can draw worth squat." Suitably impressed by the Cavern's programming, and slowly absorbing its dazzling capacity to project vivid and convincing illusions, she sets herself the task of creating a faithful 3-D version of Rousseau's Dream. Her painstaking efforts in the Realization Lab are aided by a host of supporting characters, one of whom, Spider Lim, proves so sensitive that he gets a bruise from bumping into one of Adie's virtual tree branches. ... Powers's lush language corresponds to Adie's vision of Rousseau's jungle, and in turn to Rousseau's own ecstatic vision. Yet there is also something elegiac in the author's lavish descriptions of the Cavern's miracles, as if he were offering a late, last flowering of words before the cultural ascendancy of the image. Great, quotable chunks weight every page. Even readers fond of extravagant prose may find Powers's verbal persistence wearying, though it argues that there are still contradictions and subtleties of mind that no image can track. --Regina Marler" (from http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0312280122/qid=1123686205/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_sbs_1/103-7436447-3865462?v=glance&s=books&n=507846)

Era/Year of Portrayal: near_past
Distinctive characteristics of the world in portrayal:

This takes place in the late 1980's and early 1990's. Tianenman Sqaure, The Berlin Wall falling, and the start of the Gulf War all occur.

Technology

  • Name of portrayed presence-evoking technology: the Cavern
  • Description of the technology: a virtaul reality room, which people in a tech company are working on. each team has a differernt use/vision for the room. The user simply walks into the room and may manipulate the surroundings with a wand, with hand gestures, or wear a sensory suit.
  • Nature of task or activity: On eroom can predict the global economy, one can predict weather patterns, and others simply exist for beauty.
  • Performance of the Technology: It works very well.
  • Description of creator(s): The Cavern was created by a group of tech savvy engineers. They are all stereotypical geeks, lacking social skills. There all differnert races and nationalities though, Korean, Irish, Indian, etc.
  • Major goal(s) of creator(s): For profit - to sell to the highest bidder, whether its Disney or the Army.
  • Description of users of technology: The only people who use the technology are the techies, although the main character is distraught at the idea that the military industial complex could possibly use it.
  • Type(s) of presence experience in the portrayal: spatial_presence
  • Description of presence experience: At first, the virtaul reality is not very real - the images within look like they are drawn with crayons and are one-dimensional. As technology and know how improve through out the book so does the quality of virtaul reality. The last room created is a simulation of a Byzantine Church, which supposedly appears very realistic. Sound also is added in.
  • User awareness of technology during experience: yes
  • Valence of experience: they find it enjoyable.
  • Specific responses: Even though everyone knows it is virtual, one techie sustains bruises if he bumps into a virtual wall.
Long-term consequences:

It is a mixed ending, with the protaganist realizing her beautifying work in the Cavern may be for naught, particularly if her work ends up supporting the military, which she does not want.

Other:

Coder name: Amanda Scheiner
Coder email: amandags@temple.edu
Coder affiliation: Temple University