The Sword and Laser discussion
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Ready Player One
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RPO: Virtual Reality and the end of Civilization
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I think it would depend on what else is going on in the world, and what the virtual world offered. In RP1, the rest of the world seemed miserable, except for the few who had jobs and could live as they wanted (admittedly, some of this might have been Wade's bias as he was very obviously in the lower class). The Oasis was freely available (to Wade, anyway, and it seemed inexpensively available to the masses) and offered something significantly better than reality.To the point that the author makes in the article, that is what is required. Take candy bars and fast food, for example. They (typically) taste better and are cheaper (time and money) than what most people cook. So they win on taste, time, and money.
I think for a virtual world like the Oasis to catch on and consume civilization, it would have to provide something better than reality, and it would have to do it for the masses. Even reading stories like the people who spend their entire lives in WoW, they are a relative minority to society at large, who are not only engaged in the world but willing to pay the fee to be a part of it.
Were it to happen, though, that something could provide a world that was so superior to reality that more than 50% of the world got sucked in...yeah, I think it would be a downward spiral. Probably a slow spiral, and not irrecoverable, but a downward spiral nonetheless.
Personally, the idea that you can equate a few people dying from non-stop-gaming to an eventual future where society is destroyed due to some holographic, virtual super-world is nonsense.A small portion of humans have been doing exceptionally stupid things for as long as their have been humans to do them. It's the best thing about us; you don't even have to give us free time to kill ourselves as we'll figure out a way to do it at work.
However, as to the article, I have two major issues with it.
Firstly, it assumes that a strict virtual world is the future we're headed towards. Are we? I don't know about that and I work on the web as my job. One thing I can tell you for certain is that we're not trying to move everything onto the web, we're trying to move the web more into everything else. Subtle difference but it's an important one. The idea being you move things down to a personal, real level that interacts with the real world. Augmented reality is the first step but I believe it will go dramatically further than that.
The second issue I have is that this whole state of affairs is implied to be a negative one that will bring the downfall of civilization. Would it? Why? What evidence aside from the deaths of 0.000,000,07% population?
Think of this example: You go back in time fifty years and say to someone, "In a hundred years no one will read books or newspapers, watch television, or listen to the radio. This isn't speculation; This will happen. It is a fact." Well surely the world must have ended! How do people learn? Get their news? How to they read stories? How do they get their entertainment? Have we digressed to a pre-literate society? How have we survived? Surely society has come to a horrible, tragic end.
Now say the exact same thing to someone today. Their reaction? "Well, off course not. What with the internet and mobile devices what need have I for physical books or a television? I can get my news wherever I am whenever I want directly from the source."
Human society is impressively resilient. If there is anything that's going to destroy it, it's going to require the extinction of our species and nothing less.
Personally, I look forward to the day when someone figures out how to make interactive, sharable dreams. Or, what if you could teach the brain to treat specific devices as an interactive screen? The tablet itself is just a black rectangle with four IR lights in the corner but to your brain this is taken as the latest version of iOS 42 running Angry Birds Retro Edition.
Eric wrote: "What does everyone else think? Would civilization have a chance if something like Oasis or the holodeck started."Is the assumption that civilization only exists face-to-face? After all, there are organizations that exist entirely online. Heck, almost all of the general public's interaction and knowledge with other countries happens electronically, and this includes mass-media. I personally think that civilization is only about people interacting with each other, regardless of it being electronic or in meatspace.
I think the gist of most of the articles I've read wasn't so much that once everyone got their holodeck civilization would immediately crumble, but rather it would start a slow decline. Lower birth rates, and less interaction until the population can't sustain itself anymore. Maybe it would lead to a voluntary matrix?
Well, we invented books, television, movies, and the Internet, and I still like to go outside or meet up with friends at bars. people chose to camp and hike even though they don't have to, and the people who do these things now are not likely to give up the real thing in favor of a life-like simulation, no matter how real it might be.New technology or mediums of entertainment are always going to destroy society, according to some. And yet here we are. Fully immersive VR, holodecks, what have you -- they will CHANGE society. Some people equate change with destruction.
Personally, I'd love to see birthrates decline. As it stands we're on our way to 9 billion people before the next fifty years are up. Scientists are hoping we find equilibrium at that point. If birthrates did start to decrease that would bring us to equilibrium and then, maybe, just maybe, we'd start to decline.And then after a few hundred to maybe a thousand or more years we'd get to a point that was reasonable. And then after a few more hundreds of years we'd get to a point that our population was a little on the low side.
This seems likely to me, if you could get the same stimuli from home as you could from going out, why go out? Lonely? program a virtual dream girlfriend/boyfriend. Maybe the Oasis wasn't quite to that point, but you could definitely see it heading there.
What does everyone else think? Would civilization have a chance if something like Oasis or the holodeck started.