'Exodus' to virtual worlds predicted
The appeal of online virtual worlds such as Second Life is such that it may trigger an exodus of people seeking to "disappear from reality," an expert on large-scale online games has said.
(Via Blogging the Singularity.)
As I wrote previously:
Maybe one of the reasons we have yet to make irrefutable contact with extraterrestrials is because ET civilizations tend to reach a point of terminal decadence, an erotic cul-de-sac that precludes exploration. (Compare and contrast such an implosion to the "Singularity" too many of us are waiting for with bated breath.) Sufficiently advanced ETs might while away the millennia in a hedonistic stupor, brains (or their equivalent) melded to pleasure-generating devices.
6 comments:
Hmmmm...
"...while away the millennia in a hedonistic stupor, brains (or their equivalent) melded to pleasure-generating devices".
I can think of worse methods to while away. Can we at least try the pleasure-generating devices. I swear I won't abuse it, I swear.
Michael
Can we at least try the pleasure-generating devices. I swear I won't abuse it, I swear.
*sigh*
That's what they *all* say ...
Hey! Gimme! That's MY Orgasmatron!
Interesting idea, though I can't see it being a universal norm (imho).
Terence McKenna once argued that we, as a species, already escaped into a virtual workd of our own manufacture the moment we began to use language and speak.
The word is the virtual construct that disconnects us from the felt moment of immediate experience and we built our first and most persistent "second life" more than 10,000 years ago.
Burroughs: "Rub out the word."
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