Reality sucks? Then stop believing it. Progress is more about giving up than about starting something new.
Starting in the late 2010s, the portion of reality that humans can perceive will begin to be hacked, or at least it will seem that way to the few people paying attention at first.
Instead of cancer research or even education, the most important project in the world should be to develop a workable science of virtual reality.
Eventually, VR could solve all economic and social problems except dementia and death.
For at least part of the time, it could create the illusion of almost unlimited wealth for everyone, while reducing their living costs and environmental impact. The new lifestyle would require a fraction of current energy use, and take up less space. Traffic jams would really become a thing of the past.
Everyone could own million room apartments, tropical island archipelagos, and small private universes.
As control functions, agriculture, and industry become decentralized, people will need to travel less. Virtual offices and telecommuting will reduce the need for roads, which will get narrower though there may be more of them. The transition will mean the death knell for the airlines and tourism by 2040.
A simulation-based lifestyle could allow a much larger human population to exist, at least for a few decades. Much better to live in a huge and diverse society, in which every group can express itself internally. A million TV networks are better than five.
What would it be like to live inside a box most of the time?
No one has yet imagined the breakthrough concept. Perhaps it will be a new type of drug-triggered hypnosis. The user would have to learn to enter the simulation by distorting his mind in a certain way. It could take a lot of effort until better teaching methods are invented, like learning to read.
There are many levels of VR, ranging from one to four dimensions.
-The simplest version is like poking a target with a stick.
-Next come distortable resistance frames, like pushing against a sheet.
-The simplest VR glove: each finger is restrained in a track, which can move slightly to both sides. It can be stopped suddenly or with a slight delay by embedded magnets, ratchets, or strings.
-Other options suggested in SF stories by the authors of these articles are: virtual dust clouds (shapes sensed in a sandstorm), virtual fluid densification, polygon multiplication of objects while they are being handled (from simple blobs to detailed representations), and direct mapping of an entire simulated scene onto the skin of an immobilized user ('virtual VR').
It will require all of the following:
A massive increase in fiberoptic capacity. Short-range wireless networks could also provide more decentralized bandwidth.
At least a thousand times more computing power than in 2010, and probably much more, and fundamental research in new interface designs.
Wall-sized interactive displays and ultra-high resolution face screens. Images with millions of pixels can be hypnotic in themselves. Peripheral light intensity could regulate attention. Addictive activities and games would draw people into the simulation, including types of contests and gambling. Each challenge would lead to the next.
Complete transparency and constant interfaces at all simulation levels would allow users to find their roles at all times.
The basic VR chair may look like a web of wires, an unfolding suspension hammock allowing a full range of motion, including the ability to walk, run, and fly; combining a full-motion body harness with neck restraints, and force feedback clothes with embedded memory-metal mesh.
At first, the control panels may be bigger than the simulation itself.
'Bodymap keyboards' would use toes, knees, joints, and all measurable body muscles.
Full immersion VR may be like floating effortlessly, a lucid dream, or appear entirely imaginary.
It will take physical effort to move through a simulation, like a three-dimensional treadmill, with integrated exercise activities.
Eye-tracking software decides which part of the screen is updated next and at what resolution. It will access a vast library of images, pre-rendered scenery elements, and digital objects, to reduce processor load.
'Infinite zoomability' would allow the user to explore any part of the simulation up close.
Self-contained simulation elements could be modified and combined as needed.
Reality is mostly feedback. To reduce processor load, users could manipulate a simpler 'toy body' to interact with the virtual world, like a remote-controlled model of themselves. After a while they would come to identify with it.
Eventually, focused radio beams could send signals to different brain sectors to stimulate them. Thin-slice brain scanners like MRIs could create 'interface zones' inside the user's brain, who could learn to start and stop processes with simple thoughts.
More remote possibilities mentioned in our SF stories include synesthesia amplification, proprioceptor nanites, and even brain scanning and downloading.
Each user will evolve their own custom software, and keep detailed logs of simulated activities. Personal operating systems will constantly try to anticipate demands and download needed scenery elements in advance.
Users will explore the Net from simulated core zones created over many years: virtual offices, palaces, forest clearings, tropical islands. Everyone will improve and expand their own universe, spiraling outward from a starting point. VR environments would graphically represent all their knowledge. 'Data continents' and archipelagos will recreate and store memories in virtual space.
Eventually, serious VR users might begin to feel like fictional characters. Their most important possessions will all be virtual.
Real-world location will become meaningless. VR will require small but very complex living spaces, and a good deal of exurban planning. People will move to neglected rural areas, and cities will decline. Homes will not need windows anymore. People may choose to live in machine-like flats and warehouses that are deliberately ugly. Underground living will make sense in many areas.
There will be automated warehouses instead of stores, with on-demand deliveries.
VR will even make human spaceflight unnecessary, if it isn't already today.
A major initial application will obviously be VR sex.
A lot of money can also be made in gaming.
Given human nature, the main purpose of VR will be social interaction, both for profit and personal development. Most users will prefer to deal with other individuals, some only with larger groups with formal rules.
Personal interactions and different levels of online friendships will become more important, not less, for the simple reason that there will be more to talk about than ever before. Communication at all levels will improve, with virtual neighborhoods, parties, and other gatherings to provide many unpredictable encounters.
Groups of like-minded individuals will have elaborate initiation and membership rules.
VR news reports about status and resources will seem as momentous as any historical event.
It will be necessary to test virtual societies by making them compete with each other, and to consciously reject most of them, avoiding various mind traps and other dead-ends.
Humans may eventually become like cells in a larger organism, but with more apparent freedom.
The ad-hoc future: permanent impermanence:
Unshackled from reality, humanity will begin to change. One major tool will be various methods to erase or alter memories. Then human brains can be hacked and methodically digitized.
As society becomes more complex, there will be more degrees of freedom, but also more things that can go wrong.
Future beings won't be very well adapted to their environments, and they never can be, unless they're willing to settle for long-term stagnation.
Given enough time and technology, their minds will inevitably change so much that after a while, they will have been effectively replaced by their own superior yet completely different descendents.
Read more here
Coming soon: a list of the current research.
The best hard SF novel ever written: Infinite Thunder by Jack Arcalon.
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