Cruise Ship’s 80-Inch ‘Virtual Balconies’ Livestream the High Seas

I don’t think this is anything special. It’s just fancy room decoration. Better than a painting of the outside. (Well, depending on the quality of the painting, I guess. But I guess you won’t find any good ones in cheap cruise ship rooms.)

It’s not lying, it’s not dystopian, it’s nothing of that kind at all. When they board up actual windows with screens, then you can start complaining. Before? Not really, no. That’s completely ridiculous.

Those rooms didn’t have a view of the outside before. Now they have one. It’s in many ways imperfect but (depending on the implementation) better than nothing. (I guess their cameras could be awful, noisy and low-res, the screens could be awful, so in practice it might just be a kitschy room decoration, but I was assuming the best-case scenario.)

The ridiculous elevation of all things “real” is frankly one of those disgusting status games the rich and privileged like to play. Travelling to faraway places is probably in most cases a better experience than seeing images of that place on a screen (depending on what you actually do) but not everyone is privileged to be able to do that. Screens make our world smaller and more accessible for more people. That’s great, not dystopian.

There's an interesting philosophical question here: what is the difference between seeing something in person, or watching it from inside your stateroom on a retina screen that mimics exactly what you would see if you were outside?

I agree with you that seeing things on the TV screen seems much less meaningful, but I have a hard time explaining why.

How do you define virtual? Is it limited only to simulations, or is it for any attempt to mimic nature? For example, organic compounds used to be considered impossible to synthesize due to a "vital force" until Wohler synthesized urea from inorganic compounds. Is organic chemistry the study of "fake" organic compounds?

I could see us living in houses where the view outside was simulated (mountainscape, seascape, etc) because the same view might get boring or be prohibitively expensive. If retina implants or Rift-style goggles go the distance, we might live in stark houses that are virtually decorated.

We might experience virtual travel as much as we do real travel, and do it without crowds, without heat and distance.

If the experience is accurate enough, I think our bodies and brains could be confused enough to derive more from it than we lose.

I had the exact same reaction. Sad to think that a "getaway" could be spent in front of a screen depicting what you came to see.

Author must have thought that was more readable by the layperson than "fore-facing" and "aft-facing"

Well, I've never been on one, but I think the idea of a cruise with a room like that is that you don't spend all of your time in the room. The main attraction is really the rest of the ship.

A cruise can be had for cheap (vacation-wise), comes with food, a destination and you aren't spending all your time in your room.

There was something like this on Norwegian TV, a live broadcast documentary lasting 134 hours:

http://www.hurtigruten.us/repository/MARKET-SPECIFIC-PRODUCT...

It's just for the time you spend in your room. You don't spend the entire cruise in your room.

Please link me to the 80" $500 TV you speak of.

It's probably just as good as having a window. You get the same view as you would from a window, and you can't open the windows anyway. I can think of a few advantages: first, there is no danger that your window will get smashed in a storm (probably highly unlikely, but it might be a worry for some people). Also I assume that the boat rocks less if you are in an inner stateroom, so it might be better for people who suffer from seasickness.