Virtuality Universe/Technical details

Some technical details for the Virtuality Universe

Social Distance and Communication

First, If two people "live" on the same computer, that is just as good as being in the same room in Reality. If two people "live" on different computers connected by a high-speed network, that is *almost* as good as being in the same room; the difference will change as the ratio of CPU speed to communication speed changes, but ultimately will be affected by the speed of light. (Comm speed seems to improve more slowly than CPU speed; we had 100 mbps Ethernet in 1998, and in 2006 we're still mostly using that same speed, although gigabit has been available to consumers for several years now. CPU speed, however, has gone up by a factor of about 10-20 at a quick guess.)