WELCOME TO THE VILLAGE
Villages are In.
It takes one to raise a child. The Villages means active retirement living at its best, in central Florida. The Village Movement is a grass roots model for aging in place.
Sixty years ago, Patrick McGoohan was in the tourist village of Portmeirion, North Wales, producing a TV series about a futuristic village that is safe, secure, and surveilled. It was called The Prisoner and it was broadcast in UK, US, and Germany.
No one knew what to make of the 17 episodes at the time and people are still talking about them today, especially the last two. Some consider it the best TV series ever made. All grist for the mill.
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WELCOME TO THE VILLAGE is live theater the audience is part of.
The stage is a Village our team built in VR, based on Portmerion and The Prisoner. Our cast leads people out of London, into the Italianate architecture of the Village,
and through the strange landscape, where you could have a nice life as long as you stay inside the lines. Some as cabbages, some as Kings or Queens.
Inevitably, authority must be reckoned with, your degree of Village compliance assessed. Since total security is provided, total compliance is expected. Anything less would be UnMutual.
The Rover is terrifying when it’s coming after you. It’s featurelessness makes it pure sentinel malevolence.
We have constructed our version of The Prisoner’s Dilemma.
The Rover is our instrument. With lots of other people present, you might make a break for safety on your own or you might try a cooperative strategy, advancing and retreating in sync with others to wear down the Rover. There’s risks both ways. Your call.
We open soon at the ImmersiveX Conference, taking place in VRChat, Raum, Foretell, and other metaverse locations. The theme this year is Reclaim the Future.
I write about mortality, new media technologies and other topics outside my lane. I hold a Black Belt in Learning and I’m a founding Board Member of the AfricaVR Campus & Centre and a long-time supporter of the Khmer Magic Music Bus.
My work hasn’t been featured in the New Yorker, the New Republic or the New Age Journal, but I did make MIT Tech Review . I also wrote a metaphysical crime novel titled, Murder in the Metaverse.
You can join a small but growing number of people like you who subscribe to my little gumballs of text for free, with no ‘premium tiers’ here or on Sub-Stack.
