This is one of nearly a thousand foresight statements shared by people from around the world. To return to the Voices of the People home page or to refine your search, click here.
Name: Raquel
From: Washington
Bio: Web Designer/coder/user
Area of Expertise: Entrepreneur/Business Leader
Topic: Community/Culture
Headline: We’ll Waste Away in Alternate Realities
Nutshell: The capabilities of the internet will allow for experiences so close to real life that people will forget to live.
Vision:Transmission speeds will increase exponentially, allowing anyone and everyone in the industrialized world to experience real-time, virtual-reality interaction with people all over the world.
Real-time text chat (Instant Messaging: AIM, yahoo, etc.) will be replaced by communication via a brain-chip and/or external/attachable "plug-ins" to the brain…OR by a machine that surrounds the body, covers the eyes/ears/nose/mouth with small screens/speakers/scent dispensers/taste-texture dispensers, and causes physical sensation in response to commands it receives over the internet.
People will lay around their houses, doing nothing physically, while in their minds they are flying above a glittering city at night, starring in their favorite movie, or having anonymous sex.
People will become addicted to virtual reality. Some will waste away and die. Others will forget how to interact in the imperfect realm of reality.
There will be a backlash. VR equipment will be banned. Plugins for brain chips will be made illegal. The internet will comprise so much of the backbone of the world economy that when most of the technology is banned, there will be a worldwide economic collapse.
This will launch us into World War III or IV, and then everyone or nearly everyone will die. The survivors will live in huts or something.
Date Submitted: May 23, 2005