trevett

That's funny I'm also setting up a home lab and buying a vintage microscope (state of the art 1999 from auction) to look at the creatures living in my pond. There are always new avenues.

I've accepted that we kind of lost the net to the money people and bureaucrats. Mid-late 90's it really was a frontier full of adventurous nerds. I would spend entire weekends on Efnet learning and experimenting with a tight group of people. Since a parallel non-commercial web has never taken off (and VR fizzled) I've ended up adventuring outdoors, the old school way. It's less intellectual but triggers similar feelings of discovery. There's a lot of experimentation and improvisation once you get into things like ski mountaineering because something always goes wrong. The camaraderie is also strong.

Another alternative is simply Science, if you can handle the barrier to entry.

I agree, talent needs to catch up, and new UI concepts are needed (the current VR web browsers feel very awkward). One app that was built very thoughtfully for VR and nailed it imho is Hyper Dash. Making teleporting the preferred form of movement vs. walking was brilliant.

Better UI's for navigating browsing history. The current approach is 10-20 open tabs, self-categorized bookmarks, and a history feature that lacks full-text search of content.

True the film is captivating on the aesthetic layer, with manufactured landscapes appearing as beautiful as the natural ones. Sounds like some viewers pull a positive (or neutral) message out of that equivalence.

It's been a while. I'll rewatch it and see if I can take your view of it. Yes, humans have been driven to refine systems and tools since day one.