Better than Life.

Some may have read the book "Red Dwarf" in which the 3 characters that are alive are found at the beginning of the book engrossed in the Virtual Reality Computer game "Better than Life".The 3 have wires attached to their brains and believe that what they experience to be real life.So much so that they do not want to leave the ideal world that is of there own invention.

The question I put is two fold.Do others see the comparisons between this SCI-FI concept and current online computer games?

And secondly does anyone think that Online communities,such as ATS,may also go along the same lines.

For those that have not read "Red Dwarf" the 3 characters break free from the game but their bodies are emaciated,their muscles atrophic through lack of exercise.

Could this be our fate as we search for a more fulfilling reality even if it is virtual?Or is this search a sign that Mankind has evolved intellectually so far that lifes experiences are no longer sufficient to stimulate us?

It's a strange thought, J-B: it set me thinking about the old philosophical knot with regard to the fact that we cannot -in some ways -be sure that this is "awake" and not in fact "dreaming": in other words - which is reality? Am I dreaming that I am typing now?
One can imagine some very strange repercussions of a surge forwrad in virtual technology.

"Am I dreaming that I am typing now?"

It gets worse if I consider that I might be dreaming that you have typed the above.Virtual reality may mean that one of us is indeed "Dreaming" but ,unusually,the other will know.
I guess this has been done to death in Hollywood recently.I'm thinking of Matrix and Total Recall.

Perhaps H.G.Wells' "Time Machine" may be closer than I thought.Mankind taking 2 distinctly different evolutionary paths but not along class lines as Wells thought but along technological lines.

I always felt uncomfortable with Wells' evolutionary projection in "The Time Machine".He was a Communist and,like many born and brought up in the late 19th century,a slave to Darwin's Evolutionary theory.I never thought before that his projection might have new life breathed into it by the emergence of a Western Technological Society.

It's called EverQuest. Many players have lost jobs, wives, girlfriends, and families to this game which consumes their time.

Heck, I even called in sick a couple times to play, hehe...years ago. Luckily, I never went to the extreme others did....

I come close in pushing that boundry,
my brain want's so bad to escape the stuff of life. pain of living. So it's very addicting. but you just have to moderate your self. if i didn't i wouldn't be so damn cool.

btw, I love red dwarf. (got the season 1 and 2 dvd's 4 mos ago...)

If you haven't seen it, I recommend the movie eXistenZ.

us.imdb.com...

It's the best movie I've seen about a virtual reality game.

As soon as I can plug something into my head and actually be inside battlefield (website) I will disappear from society completely.

I love the idea and have read the RedDwarf omnibus over and over.

If you could plug straigh into your brain, you could combine fully immersive, stimulating 3D games with the possibility of creating the effects of any drug without the problem of actually having taken the drug. Scary stuff, it would drive you insane eventually, surely?



[Edited on 11-8-2003 by Zzub]