Joe Bates -- Agent of the Devil?

Interesting posting from one of the lists I'm on:

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[Some of us know Joe. We didn't suspect.]

...from the net...

Today (5/17) on Pat Robertson's show _The_700_Club_ they ran a segment
on virtual reality. This was not the segment run some months ago. It
was a new one.

Today's segment focussed on the work of Joseph Bates at CMU. He's
invented a computer animation system in which the characters are
driven by their own simulated emotions and goals.

The characters look like colored balls with eyes. They're called
"woggles" or "wobbles" or something. One character can be controlled
from the keyboard, so a user can interact with the world of the
woggles. As Pat said, "it's bringing characters with person- ality
and traits and emotions to the television screen".

Bates said, "those emotions affect what they [woggles] do" and
"there's about 60 or 70 goals and sub-goals". And, referring to a sad
woggle "I'm not sure why he's so sad" and described how sending the
user-controlled woggle over to the sad woggle might cheer him up.

He talked about how this sort of interactive world could get the
viewer more involved, and how it could be a more effective medium for
artists to get across whatever message they're trying to send.

Then, CBN showed clips from recent movies involving VR and computer
animation, and saying that this technique would allow you to be a
character in these movies.

Anti-porn crusader Robert Showers was interviewed. He said $10 to $12
billion in income comes from porn and it has connection to organized
crime. He said the biggest consumers are teenage boys 12-17 both for
porn and video violence. He talked about how we see rapes by
12-year-olds of 4-year-olds because of this.

Author Tal Brooks was interviewed. He said, "90% of your movies are
evil" and "I'm not so naive to believe that virtual reality won't be
the same thing".

Wrapping things up, Pat compared virtual reality to television in the
1930's. He repeated the point that there's still time "to control
some of these things so they don't get out of hand" and referring to
video video games said "the things that are done, the violence, the
obscenity of evil, is beyond comprehension". And speaking directly to
the viewer, "we've got to do something to bring people into awareness
of what the problem is". Then he repeated the $12 billion figure and
reminded the viewer what you can do to oppose that. (If you don't
know, you can call 804 420 0700 and they'll be delighted to offer some
suggestions.)

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