So I was staring at my bookshelf and wanted to pick up something to read, House Of Cards by Michael Dobbs stared back at me and having just watched the series again on Virgin Media on Demand I reached for it but got sideswiped by Philip K Dick’s “Do Avatars Dream Of Electric Sheep?” … ahhh yes why not, I thought. This also ties in with a blog post from Hamlet Au over at New World Notes and listening to people on the radio pondering whether any of the real world is real or are we in a simulation, sort of like Second Life but with much better graphics and technology would be the answer if that were true, of course it’s an argument you can’t win and probably best saved for a night down the pub because that’s a debate with no end.
Philip K Dick came from an era where Mars and Alpha Centauri were the Kings of Sci Fi. Mars is no longer fashionable, to such a degree that I’m told that the remake of We Can Remember It For you Wholesale Total Recall doesn’t even include the Mars component. Alpha Centauri might be back in fashion in the Sci Fi world though now that they’ve found a planet the size of earth orbiting it. However, a theme in Sci Fi has been inhabiting worlds elsewhere, another one has been replacing human to human emotions with virtual ones or machinery. Even Woody Allen’s Sleeper and the movie Barbarella touch upon this.
However, for the vast majority of people virtual worlds and their ilk will never replace human to human interaction, they will not outclass smell, taste and touch. There are use cases for people whereby they will work and give people experiences they aren’t physically capable of, but that’s a minority case, a worthy one, but a minority still. They can open our eyes to new experiences, but they aren’t replacing human experiences.
For most of us, whether we’re a Pandaren Monk in World Of Warcraft, an avatar in Second Life or a Jedi Knight in Star Wars: The Old Republic, we’re encompassing that within our own reality, we’re not becoming the character, we’re aware of the environment around us whilst we explore the virtual environment.
I dislike this distinction between real life and virtual life, mainly because virtual lives are encompassed within real lives, they are not a separate entity. Yes people can explore avenues via virtual worlds that they wouldn’t be able to explore physically, but no matter how tempting it may seem at times, we don’t really want to strike a blow against our boss at work with a curse of agony.
Virtual worlds exist within our real life whole. They can be a means of brilliant escapism or a means of communicating with and meeting new friends, but they exist within our existing environments and are constrained by time the same way as everything else is. I like the escapism aspect, it’s one of the reasons I object to the idea of having to link myself publically to my virtual world avatars for all and sundry to know my business and I will continue to object to attempts by the likes of Facebook to share more than I’m comfortable with.
Some of us engage in our virtual selves more than others, some take it more seriously than others but we do so within the confines of our whole realities. This is not a new concept but it’s one that despite technological advances, I can’t see changing any time soon.
On that note it’s time to pop to the pub to engage in some mind altering escapism with alcohol, alcohol has been around a lot longer than Science Fiction books and ideas too!
sorry could only tweet this once. They should change that 😉