Chapter 384: V.1 Haptic Shock Chair
The sands of time slipped by quickly and within the blink of an eye, it was September.
Unlike the climate in the Central Continent, Namibia located in the African Continent was of a subtropical climate. Due to its higher terrain, the temperature difference throughout the year had little variance and bordered between 18 degrees and 28 degrees.
Over the last three months, the world had been largely quaint, only slowly ticking away to the hands of the clock.
However, there seemed to be something major brewing underneath this deceiving stillness.
On this day, in a little-known media company in the business capital of the Mainland, an employee named Little Wu clocked in at his company’s office building at 7:59 a.m. sharp. He went to his seat in the office, feeling relieved.
“Phew, good thing I made it. Would not be nice if I was late on the first day...”
Little Wu allowed himself a moment to enjoy the cool air-conditioning inside the office. He then pulled a sheet of tissue paper to wipe the sweat trickling down his forehead before booting up the computer.
Today was the first of September, the start of a brand new month. Compared to the energetic rookies, all the enthusiasm and brashness had long escaped Little Wu who had been working here for the last two years. These days, he seemed to have stepped into middle age ahead of schedule. He also had a sack of wolfberry soaking inside his thermos flask.
For small-time media companies like the one he was in, fresh graduates came in one after another like ripe bundles of leek. There was always somebody resigning and someone new to immediately replace them.
Small-time media companies like these knew best how to squeeze everything they could out of the average fresh graduates. The truly competent graduates would never even consider working in a place like this.
“Ah, here’s to another boring, ordinary day.”
After sitting still for five minutes, the sweat finally stopped pouring out. He patted his large, round belly before opening the web browser and checked out his bookmarked website to start going through the comments of the netizens from yesterday’s posted video.
Seeing how it was the last day of August yesterday, Little Wu had uploaded twenty-eight videos all in one go to hit his KPI.
This was Little Wu’s day-to-day work. Simply put, his job was to use company accounts to publish lots of technology-related videos on major websites and platforms across different continents. This included Baidu, B Station, UC, Tencent, and so on, all to earn more page views.
The reason they had to be technology-related was that he was in charge of the tech branch in the company. The workforce here was not as large as the entertainment and celebrity-gossip department. It was right up Little Wu’s alley.
On the Internet, Little Wu was affectionately referred to as “Editor” by his followers. The company’s account was otherwise referred to as the “Marketer”.
Little Wu took a look at the accounts on various platforms to check the barrages of messages left behind in yesterday’s video. A shadow of a smirk slowly rose to the corner of his lips as he did so.
With just one glance, there were easily more than five thousand comments left behind in each video combined. The average comments for each video stood somewhere around a hundred and sixty, most of them were the kind comments left behind by the netizens.
The netizens these days sure were a friendly bunch...
“Screw this editor!”
“What am I supposed to watch here! You haven’t said anything worthwhile halfway into the video and just wrapped it up?”
“What do you mean where am I watching this from? Obviously it’s from my phone!”
“This stupid background music again...”
“This is a commercial account, just dislike this video and be done with it!”
Little Wu felt something riling up inside of him as he went through the kind words left behind by his dear netizens. How naive did they have to be that they thought their little comments could disrupt his monstrous upload speed?
Bunch of young gra.s.shoppers...
What they did not know was that all he needed to make money off them was for them to tap inside to view the video. The little comments they left were the cherry on top.
When he saw the total page views totaling up to hundreds of thousands, his heart blossomed like a flower.
The reason that he had to be subject to the connected anger of the netizens was that he was extremely proficient in using extremely exaggerated t.i.tles. He then wrapped up the t.i.tle with a suggestive remark to tempt people to click inside.
For example, if the w.a.n.g family from the next village just lost one of their pigs to a disease, Little Wu knew exactly how to spice up the article with a mysterious t.i.tle: The old pig of the village leader died a horrible death in the middle of the night. When the leader woke up the next morning, he was greeted with a terrible sight...
As far as Little Wu was concerned, the contents of the video did not matter. Any piece of information in the tech world could be exaggerated and made into a video. What mattered was that these contents could generate the highest amount of page view possible. The reception mattered very little.
Everything revolved around the generated volume.
After two years of doing this, Little Wu was completely desensitized and immune to these comments. He had even come to enjoy it to a certain extent. The first thing he did every morning when he arrived at the office was to “admire” the barrage of insults and slander from the netizens on all the different platforms.
After he was done being fascinated by their comments, Little Wu closed the tabs of the videos he had uploaded yesterday and started working on today’s videos.
He first went through the local science and tech forums of various countries to scope potential news. It did not take him long before he stumbled into several interesting articles. Most of these were baseless articles but were phrased formally to make them appear trustable. Little Wu thought that these articles were interesting enough. They would become his articles now.
It did not matter to Little Wu either whether these pieces of news were valid or not. Even if they were fake, they were still worth sharing as long as they contained a certain value.
After he was done collecting articles from different platforms, Little Wu directed his attention to the forums and official websites belonging to the major tech companies in hopes of finding some topic that garnered enough attention.
First of all, he went to Apple’s official site.
“Hm... The annual Autumn Apple Conference is approaching. Based on recent trends, it should be the iPhone 16. According to the officials, apart from the flagship killer iPhone 16, there are also several new products. Hm... I can simply throw a video together with this...”
Little Wu only briefly glanced through them and copied these news into his file. He then went to the Blacklight Biotechnology official website.
“Na, nani?”
The moment he tapped on the Blacklight Biotechnology official website, a piece of notification immediately popped out.
New Product Announcement!
Little Wu felt his heart skip a beat when he read this.
As a company registered in the Mainland, Blacklight Biotechnology was a company that had truly built itself from the ground up. Although most of their business was conducted overseas, they at least had the confidence to say that they came from the Mainland. This gesture was unlike some of the other companies that were nurtured in the Mainland but ended up claiming that they were international companies.
This was to say that Little Wu did have a positive impression of Blacklight Biotechnology. On top of that, each time they announced a new product, they would inevitably bring about a technological revolution. The term new product announcement alone should be able to net Little Wu’s three videos!
The initial boredom Little Wu was feeling quickly vanished when he considered this prospect. He quickly swiped the notification away and started to look at the Blacklight Biotechnology official website.
On the Blacklight Biotechnology official site main page, there were five major sections. They were categorized as biopharmaceutical, medical, viral disease, electronic technology, and tissue engineering. They were labeled with striking colors that were green, white, gray, black, and yellow to be immediately distinctive.
On the corner of the electronic technology section, there was a large exclamation mark beaming in red.
“What, the new product is an electronic product?”
Little Wu was shocked to see this. He still had the Little X Translation a.s.sistant installed on his computer and was probably more informed than anyone to give an opinion on this Blacklight Biotechnology product. It was all thanks to this software that he was able to delve through all the foreign forums without trouble. Otherwise, his subpar English would never net him this job he was currently working.
After the last few years, was Blacklight Biotechnology finally trying to stake its place in the electronic technology industry again?
Little Wu excitedly tapped inside and saw a large banner on the top of the electronic technology page. Inside the banner was what appeared to be an egg-shaped ma.s.sage chair.
“What is this?”
After Little Wu tapped inside, he noted that this egg-shaped ma.s.sage chair seemed to be some sort of VR device?
“What... How could it be VR...”
Little Wu suddenly fell speechless. This was not to say that VR was not impressive. The problem was that over the last decade, there had been a vast catalog of VR devices released everywhere. People’s initial fascination with this subject had long been replaced by a sense of numbness. The only time VR had shown some actual notable progress was the game Half-Life: Alyx that was released in 2020.
The game was given the full mark by IGN and impressed countless people. However, the catch was that it was only a stand-alone game at the end of the day. The range of options inside the game was also clearly hindered by the limitations of VR technology so it was a bit of a letdown.
These days, VR had become an oversaturated market where everyone and their grandmothers wanted a share of the pie. There were enough products of varying quality everywhere, enough to dazzle anyone who bothered to look, but there had been no revolutionary technological progress for a while. It was largely in the stage of concept exploration and experimentation currently.
Was Blacklight Biotechnology going to cash in on the oversaturated market as well?
Little Wu shook his head, his initial excitement quickly dwindled. “How much can they achieve with VR anyway. Is it going to be anywhere as realistic as the ones described in web novels?”
When Little Wu tapped inside, he saw the promotional footage posted by the officials. He played the video, still only faintly interested. The image of an egg-shaped chair quickly popped out.
This product was displayed in a close-up angel. Following a piece of crisp background music, the dimensions of the chair were displayed on the screen.
.5 meters in diameter and 1.66 meters in height. After that, another string of text: V.1 Haptic Shock Chair.
It was rather self-explanatory, this was the name and dimensions of the VR device.
Then, a blinding flash took over the background of the chair as the background transformed into a sheet of white before slowly fading into the scene of a common household. A young man was seen walking into the view of the camera before quickly sitting down casually on the Haptic Shock Chair, as one would do with any other common household furniture.
“Manufactured with genuine leather. Built-in liquid cooling cycle, adjustable seat temperature.”
Another string of narration appeared at the bottom of the video. The footage quickly zoomed in and provided a transparent view of the outer structure of the chair, vividly displaying its internal components.
Just as described, there were dozens of pipes in its internal structure. What seemed to be some form of coolant cycled through the pipes, controlling the temperature air permeability of the chair.
“Four different gear presets available. During your time of leisure, enjoy the most premium ma.s.sage experience.”
After this, the video zoomed in further, this time into the mechanical structure of the chair.
After that, the camera pulled away again to display the egg-shaped chair in its full glory. The young man in the video had toggled the ma.s.sage mode, he leaned back into the chair with a content look on his face.
“Now this is the first time I’ve seen such a setup... Blacklight Biotechnology, you sure have one up your sleeve...”
Little Wu commented as he unscrewed the lid of a bottle and continued watching.
“Revolutionary Technological Innovation. Holographic Projection.”
After the sentence appeared, the young man in the video aborted the ma.s.sage sequence and selected another b.u.t.ton. The b.u.t.ton appeared to be the switch of the main computer. Upon being toggled, the opening on the egg-shaped chair which was where the young man was seated suddenly flashed and displayed a projected screen!
“Pfft!”
Little Wu spat out the contents of the bottle. He hastily yanked a sheet of paper towel and slapped them on the keyboard while his eyes drifted to the screen again.
“Am I hallucinating?”
Little Wu muttered to himself in utter disbelief. Inside the video, a holographic screen did appear right in front of the young man’s face. It was a semi-transparent screen that still allowed him to barely make out the young man’s silhouette behind the screen. However, this was not the focal point. The focal point was just where was the screen projected from?
Could it be that just as the narration described, it was a fully-developed holographic projection technology?
At this time, countless people all over the world watching this had their minds blown as well. Holographic projection already existed in the present, but most of them were mock-projections. None of them properly qualified as a full-fledged holographic projection. Little Wu may not be a complete technology enthusiast, but he knew that much at least.
With that said, how much could mere footage prove? Was this just a marketing stunt? Exaggeration? Was Blacklight Biotechnology not afraid of the backlash?
The way Little Wu saw it, Blacklight Biotechnology had a remarkable global reputation. They were not short on funds either so it would be unreasonable for them to rely on such stunts to draw the spotlight.
Unless their new product was truly innovative...
Little Wu silenced his suspicions and continued watching.
After that, the young man in the video opened a web browser and began browsing. Through the semi-transparent screen, the young man could be seen smiling happily as he leisurely browsed the web, what stood out was his method of browsing...
Little Wu sensed something different here. From the angle of the video, the young man in the chair did not seem to be making any movements at all. The only subtle movement he made was the occasional head turn now and then. Meanwhile, the web page moved on its own.
After a brief moment, the web page on the screen was closed as another web page was opened. Moments after, the web page scrolled on its own as if someone was controlling it.
However, the young man still did not move at all. There was nothing resembling a keyboard or a mouse on his hands either.
While Little Wu was trying to figure out the working behind this, the narration spelled it out for him...
“The revolutionary external brain-computer interface technology can detect and connect to the user’s brain waves. The technology translates the user’s thoughts into direct signals, allowing the user to enter the next era of human-computer interaction!”
“This is real!”
Little Wu could not keep himself on the edge of his seat anymore and immediately shot up from his chair. His eyes widened in disbelief...