You completely left out the merchantile class. Somebody has to stock, advertise and sell the durn things. Also, provide accessories like period clothing and actual weaponry.
Taking a cue from the cable television industry, there will be somebody around who can set up an illegal holodeck that taps into someone else’s legally paid for holodeck services.
Also you’ll need someone who can disengage the safety protocols.
I would think there would be holodeck stars. People who allow themselves to be digitized. They would also have to probably do some acting so the computer will have something to work with as it does the program. I mean, Kathy Ireland’s smile is completly different from Martha Quinn’s smile.
Ummmmm… I need to be alone now.
Holodeck authors and artists—guys to write really interesting stories and situations.
As fun as living your fantasies is, the allure of passively being told a story seems too much of a “hook” to completely disappear. So “Hollywood” might survive, in a sense.
You’d probably need librarians and historians, too, to provide the raw data and reference material.
Well, unless AIs are able to take up those function well enough on their own. In which case, you might be able to cut humans out of that loop entirely. There might be a surviving cottage industry of human artists, but if the AIs are just overall better artists, I’m afraid human creativity won’t be able to compete.
And…does this theoretical Holodeck include matter replication? If so, that could provide for a lot of material needs (food, clothing, etc.), assuming you have enough energy to sustain it.
Well, actually, if we have enough technology to build replicators, and A.I.s advanced enough to gain at least semi-sentience, I get the feeling that we won’t really have to worry about the lot of the “sub-holodeck plebe” caste. But someone will have to worry about what to do with all their bodies. :eek: