Virtual reality sounds like paradise : we ’ll upload our cognizance , ditch our smelly kernel body , and be beautiful , immortal rockstars in a scarcity - free wonderland , constantly . But engineering science never quite figure out out the way you hope it will , and science fabrication writer have already pointed out four ways virtual realness could take up .
You ’d never have enough computing resources to make it work
InRudy Rucker‘s novel Postsingular ( useable as a free download ) , nanomachines ( called “ nants ” ) turn the world in to a virtual model , scream “ Vearth . ” And it turns out that Vearth is kind of a sucky written matter of the “ real ” world , because it take up too much bandwidth to create a decent version . “ The H2O , swarm and fire were never quite right . In any case , the nants did n’t always try that hard ; they often ensconce for cutoff as crude as representing a tree by a cookie - cutter vapid polygon . ”
And then the Big Pig , the superintendent - intelligence that runs the simulation , comes up with an economy , where if you pay a monthly fee , you get deliver at a high-pitched resolution . There ’s only so much room to live in Vearth ’s high resolution and good - simulated zones , so most people have to live in tiny flat or in worse areas . And then a rival computer programmer make Gustav rise up , offering equal computational imagination for all — unluckily , those computational resources are limited at undecomposed , so Gustav ’s whole world looks like an old - school colonnade video secret plan .
As virtual masses are birth more and more virtual “ children , ” who were never “ real ” humankind to start out with , overcrowding becomes a serious job and people compete for bandwidth . “ Vearth could only support so many virtual agents . With the parturition rate perish up , the old and weaker sims were being culled out . ” finally , there are terrorists and calculator computer virus that wipe out tons of people . And the Big Pig realizes that people can get along without their subconscious mind , so it takes those away .
thin out - and - library paste characters
In a similar vein , Jim Munroe ’s Greco-Roman novel Everyone In Silico ( available as a free download)takes place in a near future where a corporation take off porting people to a virtual version of San Francisco , called Frisco . It ’s beautiful and immaculate there , but a band of the people are just cookie - cutter transcript of the same icon . One quality visits a temple in Frisco :
Another monastic , this one replenish the holy water , gave him an monovular disapproving eyebrow . This time he did n’t bother excuse , just found a pew near the back and model down .
You ’d reckon that since they ’ve bothered to make a tabernacle for themselves , they ’d make a couple of dissimilar types of monks instead of cutting and pasting … .
Another cut - and - library paste monk walked by , holding a small flaming cupped in his helping hand , and Paul ’s ire was whipped up again . We had an boundlessly wide-ranging environment on Earth , and we painted over it to soak up our little joystick figures … .
“ What do you think when you see that ? ” Paul read , direct at the two monks , one at the altar and one make clean stained crank .
“ That whoever was doing skins was blooming lazy , ” Jeremy suppose , returning an orb back under his sunglass . “ But that ’s the direction it is here , man . It ’s not just the skins , ” he said , pitter-patter tooth as he said it . “ It ’s the computer architecture too . And the security . That ’s why there ’s so many holes for lowlife like us . ”
Paul looked at him , expecting he ’d have change his zombie fount for a rat one , but he was back to normal . “ Just laziness , huh ? ”
“ Well , ” Jeremy sigh . “ OK , ” he started , tiredly accepting Paul ’s seriousness . “ It ’s like this . I ’ve get a protagonist who does skins for environmental part . He get motherfucker - all for it , and they ’re always on him – they want , like , 75 a day – so he ca n’t pass time on the detail . So he churn them out . He ’s made some wicked squidmen for an Atlantis environment , though . ”
It would be too predictable , with no danger or discovery
Robert J. Sawyer‘s fossilist character in forecast God learns that every intelligent species either waste itself up or decides to “ pass , ” upload its consciousness into cyberspace . The estimate of giving up corporal existence does n’t invoke to him , because it would be like giving up your humanity : no more skinned human knee or break away ticker . But the clincher is that it ’s too predictable . “ Virtual world was nothing but air guitar writ large , ” Sawyer indite . You could go on a simulated shaft , and even expose dodo there — but they ’d only be there because you wanted them to be there , and they would n’t advance our understanding of evolution or the universe at all .
As Sawyer explain in Factoring Humanity :
The trouble with virtual - reality simulations was just that : they were simulations … There was a central difference between skiiing in Banff and ski in your living room ; part of the frisson was the possibility you might break a leg , part of the experience was the full bladder that could n’t be easily empty , part of the fun was the real sunburn that one got during a day on the slopes , even in the middle of winter .
It could suck if you ’re not center course
Veteran editorGardner Dozoisdiscusses the “ virtual realism ” future in his “ Summation ” in the 1997 volume of The Year ’s Best Science Fiction And Fantasy :
I ’m not sure that I think in this futurity , although no doubt bits and small-arm of it will come to happen . For one thing , it seems like a very midway - class opinion of the futurity , ignoring — as , indeed , does most skill fable — the query of what all the miserable people are going to be doing while everyone is lead this Maximum Urban Cocooned creation . Are all the pathetic people buy the farm to have Virtual Reality cocoons too ? Who ’s picking up the refuse ? Who ’s sweeping the streets ? Who ’s fixing the plumbery ? It ’s like a future where only the Eloi are around ; no Morlocks . A mistake that much science fiction makes is to wear that social alteration strike everyone to the same degree at the same time — which is n’t the way it usually wreak . There are hoi polloi living within fifty air mile of my flat in Philadelphia who do n’t have electricity or indoor plumbing ; there are the great unwashed living within a thousand mile or so of here , in rural Mexico , say , who are subsist a hand - farming subsistence not really unlike than the one their ancestors were living hundreds or even thousands of years back …
The gunpoint being that the nowadays is not at a uniform level of social development , so I doubt that the future tense is going to be like that either . I wonder , in fact , if , in the hereafter , we ’re going to see people populate at a Stone Age level — or living the way most of us in the West do now , for that matter — side by side with people live such a high - technical school existence , at such a level of technical sophism , that they ’re nearly incomprehensible to us . But the different stage of technological edification will be layered throughout fellowship , like the level in nougat , the whole spectrum from Stone Age to Incompehensibly Advanced Singularity Folk existing side by side at the same meter ; it wo n’t be all one uniform layer , Virtual realness Cocoons all the way down .
BooksRobert J. SawyerRudy RuckerVirtual Worlds
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