A nice ramble through virtual environments (VE) and online role playing games popped up on our Dutch radar. While we are firmly in the bioconservative camp, Jan-Willem Bats makes the case for The Matrix and argiues that Nanobots can be built to take up residence in our brains, and replace our real life sensory inputs with VE input
Some advantages of VE over real life:
* Death and disease are non-existant, since virtual bodies cannot be harmed.
* Everything is for free, since it takes a computer system no more power to render a king’s castle than a hobo’s alleyway. Money will be irrelevant, and as such we won’t be enslaved to it anymore. We’ll be free to do whatever we like.
* Because of previously mentioned advantages, crime, and the suffering that goes accompanied with it, will become an irrelevancy. Why bother to steal something when you can get everything for free? Why bother to kill or harm anyone when you know it’s not possible?
* You can adapt any form you like. You won’t be held back anymore by limitations imposed on you by a bad genetic carddeck. Unfair advantages will not exist. Life will truly be a game, with fair rules and equal chances for everybody. Getting an extremely muscular body will just be a matter of downloading a body-model from the Internet, as opposed to the years and years of strenuous training it requires in the real world. Always wanted to know what it’s like to be a dolphin, tiger or dragon? In VE, this is not a problem at all.
* You can be with anyone at anytime. Human contact won’t require two persons to be in the same physical location anymore. This especially comes in handy if you’d like to have sexual relations (in which case it’s really important to be in the same physical location!) with somebody you’ve met on the Internet. Today, when you meet an interesting gal/guy online, you better hope he/she lives close to you. Otherwise the relationship is off. What a drag!