Thing didn't freaking start until 5 to 10, without explanation or apology.

Vinge is a professorial author, so I kept reminding myself "content is king". But this was heady, speculative fiction stuff (as opposed to derogatively monicered "skiffy" -- see my paper for the difference) -- which is to say, it was great.

He discussed ubiquitous computing, embedded processors, networked processors (and their soon-to-be incarnations of smart RFID or equivalents). This later evolution will lead to Smart Dust and MEMS, and Localizers (where a smart embedded processor knows where it and its
compatriots are in 3D space).

Wearable computing is needed to leverage these changes. As I think about this, we already are moving rapidly in this direction, with devices like true smartphone or PDA phones, with latter generation Bluetooth and upcoming wireless USB. The next step is ultra high-resolution eyeglass displays that track and can be driven by eye movements.

Interesting discussion of reality becoming database.

The scary thing is handling current software technology challenges, which become a much bigger deal with wearables -- SPAM, spoofing, cacheing, hijacking, etc.

So how does this apply to gaming?

Vinge posited that much of the "wisdom behind games become[s] the wisdom behind running our civilization."

There's also an impact with the huge number of concurrent simultaneous realities can exist.

People are going to need to come to grips with the reality that people talk to people that aren't physically present.

There was not much of a discussion on world economic impact to/from job-related alternate realities, micro-duration labor markets, analysts. My head is rabit trailing on things that impact or support or curtail these scenarios.

He made an unsettling analogy of members of the Society for Creative Anachronism living in their world 24/7 -- their pervasive reality. I have this unsettling vision of having a performance discussion with an employee of mine, who's living in this world, and sees me as the evil, oppressive fief lord. Is there a fundamental, uncrossable disconnect? Or, do one or the other of us suspend our reality and join the other's? Or do we BOTH suspend our realities, and go to some sterile white room reality with aluminum chairs and no destractions? The mind boggles. Or at least itches.