The sites mentioned above are only the first steps, and they are already tremendously addictive. There are games that are shared online by tens of thousands of players, called massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPG) where people are so involved in their online worlds that they frequently forget about their real world.

Let’s take this to the extreme. A time will come when technology will enable us to plunge headlong into the virtual world literally. We will be able to forget what is happening around us and experience the virtual world as if it were the real one. Like The Matrix, some probe will be pushed into us, and we will be able to live in worlds of our own creation.

Just imagine being able to be in a world where you are God. Artificial intelligence that will pass the Turing Test will already be so advanced that you will be able to have a family in the virtual world and raise them in the same way the real world allows you to. If you have any fantasies, then this is the place for you. You could indulge in whatever you want without any thought of repercussions; you can have the perfect body and could have an entire harem of beauties at your beck and call.

Image Credit: signalstation

Indeed, who will want to come out of this perfect world? It will be the ultimate addiction. Humans will be quite content to live inside them, keeping their real world bodies alive by being fed by tubes on the outside. I’m not being facetious. I’m dead serious. That’s what will happen if everything is unimpeded.

Real world relationships will dwindle and then become almost extinct. Who wants an imperfect or unsatisfying relationship when you can have the best, most handsome or beautiful and sweetest spouse (or many spouses!) in your own world where you are God?

The economic system as we know it will collapse utterly. People will not want anything else other than the ability to spend time online in their worlds. It will be available as a utility bill like the Internet. People will spend all their money buying online time (with a little for being fed by drip), and manufacture of all goods and services will drop to zero. Housing is perhaps the only industry that will remain, but not as we know it. All that will be needed will be dormitories where our bodies can lie, and thousands of such bodies can fit into one house.

Of course, any company that controls online access will flourish, and the industry will be responsible for 95% of the economy, if not more. It’s a scary thought, but one that we currently find repulsive only because we haven’t gotten accustomed to it. Once in that situation, it will be the most natural thing in the world.

The question now remains as to what work will people do to earn their money to buy online time. If the demand for all products is zero, then what possible work will be left? Perhaps online time will then be a free service, which no one can possibly gain by earning money.

I’m sorry if all this sounds a bit Orweilian. But this is where I see the future heading, and what can be done to stop it?