If we could all be high all the time why would we choose to be anything else?
There are questions of legality and social acceptability but certainly plenty of places and situations where drug/alcohol use is legal and accepted.
There are questions of cash flow but certainly plenty of people with the funds to stay buzzed 24/7.
Although addiction (drugs, alcohol, internet, Nintendo etc.) is a problem and would be an issue with a fully functional holodeck, I don’t think it would crumble society. There would be plenty of people who would eventually get bored (some quite quickly I imagine) and either move on to the next fix or embrace reality. Some would reject the technology altogether right from the start, and not just the Amish and the elderly (except for chowder, he is totally there with Scarlett Johansons 1 & 2, decked out in his teddy boy best… go get her bro).
Not all that is new is improved and not all that is ultimatley engaging is addictive, at least not for all people. Now if you’ll excuse me I have to read about a dozen more threads, browse the Yahoo headlines, double check my 401k performance, chat with some fellow in London, rework my budget spreadsheet, browse the latest Gary Varvel cartoons, look up GERD on Wikipedia and play several games of solitare all before the end of my lunch break. Addicted to technology? I really don’t understand what you mean.
Oh come on, It wouldn’t take over everything. Already in today’s society “Natural” is treated as synonymous with “Good”
This idea would be shouted from the rooftops by more and more people if we had such artificial worlds.
While I’m sure some people would become addicted I think it’d mostly be the same people who get addicted to things now.
A majority of western society currently prefer the passive experience of watching TV in their leisure time. I don’t see all those people getting off their sofa’s to actually do something.
Have none of you even watched Star Trek? I’d never freaking go near the thing. I’d be too afraid that I would never get out, that I would be killed by a supposedly harmless hologram, that the holograms would figure a way to get out and take over the world, etc.
If the simulation was completely realistic, I’d be worried about Cronenberg’s Videodrome type of scenario - i.e. have you really woken up, or are you just dreaming that you did?
Nobody would “die” in your life every again if you didn’t want them to.
Imagine coming home to a virtual house, housed in a room the size of a cubical, where your wife, child, etc. were still alive even if they had once died in the real world.
I think there would be a large group of people who steadily became divorced from reality, returning home to a perfect home with never-aging children, once-dead-now-alive spouses.
I think lives would become populated with 3D projections of tamagotchi families. Why date a real person when you could live with a perfect projection who thinks and acts just like you want them to? Why have a real child when you can simulate one that sleeps when you want and gets good grades.
You could go to work without every really traveling - everybody around you is simulated by interacting, independent, holocubes.
Your kite string question? No problem, you’re in your cube, he’s in his, neither of your truly in the other’s 10 by 10 foot space but simply projected from yours to his and his to yours. True physical contact would be rare.
I don’t think civilisation would end. Thermodynamics will rear its ugly head. These holodecks will require energy. You will have to get a job in the real world, in order to pay your electric bill. And to buy the latest-and-greatest version of the Lord of the Rings simulation.
With a holodeck, you can make your own movies, and cast them with simulations of your favorite actors. Without having to pay the actual actors. Unless the software contained some subroutine to enforce royalty payments. Copyright and trademark issues would become the subject of much litigation.
Rich snobs would sneer at holodecks, and insist on Live Theater, with flesh-and-blood Actors. To prove their Authenticity, minimalist costume and set design would become ultra-fashionable.
He said obscenity laws, and as it stands right now to run afoul of those in the USA there’s no criterion of real v. virtual in the Miller test. You could not prosecute it as bestiality, kiddie pr0n, or whatever, since there’s no actual animals, children or other persons injured, **but ** your sim **could ** be deemed by a jury to be lewd, prurient, devoid of a redeeming artistic, scientific or social value, violatory of “community standards”, improperly secured from access by minors, etc. Hey, it’s illegal to grow and smoke your own marijuana in your own property, remember?
Either holodeck or Virtual Reality, yes, the addiction potential is great, but like everything else, at some point you have to get some work done in order to PAY for this. Not just paying for the gear and the consumables, but let’s be honest, the hottest scenario downloads would NOT be freeware (and the standards body would probably create a DRM designed so the device breaks your real knees and elbows if it detects a bootleg copy).
From another slightly snarky angle, yeah, as others have implied, if our holodecks actually worked exactly like those in Star Trek, there would ensue a Golden Age of Torts, and lawyers across the land would grow rich and happy on the wealth of the holodeck makers
What happens next is obviously a media-freakout over how the entire world is ruined forever now, and won’t someone please think of the children?! Then everyone calms down, and it becomes a part of life, just like computers and TV.
At least you’d get exercise in a holodeck. What would destroy society would be a total-immersion VR world. You settle yourself into some kind of isolation tank, and stimuli and some kind of nutrient goo are pumped into you. I think there has been some sci-fi written about this theme. Eventually, the only people not in tanks are the people maintaining the system, and they eventually get the idea to just switch it all off.
I just hope they invent something like this before I’m too old to use it. Imagine getting to touch a woman without having to fly to Amsterdam!
I fully expect them to be banned in many places due to the Christian Right’s screeching. Can’t have anyone deriving pleasure from holodecks! It might distract people from getting married and having kids! After all, if you’re not part of a family, you’re evil! (See Faruiza’s thread.)
