02-04-2022, 01:14 PM
(02-04-2022, 10:20 AM)David Horn Wrote:(02-03-2022, 12:31 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: I like your first paragraph David above that begins "I'm sure Eric will respond too".... I think unless reforms are made in the 2020s the correction in the next 2T would be made by mother nature, and it will not be to our benefit. As for "we are already there," yes we are already approaching tipping points toward destruction. But whether some tech has changed is very-much beside the point. That is not real change. Real change is what has been resisted for 40 years: political change, social reform. Such has not been made yet.
I was thinking about that watching a Perry Mason episode, filmed in about 1960. Sure, people had to pick up a telephone when it rang, or dial numbers to make a call. Now we put a mobile phone up to our ear. And I think, big fu*king deal. Just a little change to how we operate physically, but this is not a change in the way we live or in our real conditions. Some things changed in the 1960s and 70s; less restrictions on diverse groups and more opportunity for them, and in the 1980s, when inequality started moving back to what it was in the 1920s. And all the good actors I saw on Perry Mason are gone and none have replaced them. Beyond that, not much change at all.
The real problem is a VR World, and it's coming. VR was shown quite vividly in the movie Ready Player One. VR World can be anything we can imagine, and living there can be glorious, but it's still a vicarious experience. At the same time, reality can suck, but too many may decide they don't care. It's Zuckerberg's wet dream: owning the real world and leaving the vicarious one to the proles.
I'm not sure there's a way back from that kind of insanity.
It is up to people to recognize that the Real World is far more satisfying for peak experiences. Sure, it is possible to simulate riding the Big Wave off Waikiki while stuck in a wheelchair in Kansas City, but it is obviously not the same thing. That may be one's only possibility of experiencing surfing if one is a paraplegic. A video tour of the Louvre is not the same as visiting it in person, and a live performance of the Met is not the same as seeing it in a movie house. Virtual Reality (VR) is at best a substitute. Maybe we will be stuck with substitutes due to disappearance or scarcity. Maybe we will have to satisfy ourselves with fake 'surf and turf' as a dinner. We still watch war movies in the knowledge that watching The Longest Day is far preferable to storming Omaha Beach in person. D-Day is long ago and it is unlikely to be done again in reality for a very long time.
Movies have existed for over 120 years, and books (and especially historical legends such as the Iliad and the Odyssey) far longer. Obviously if one is a poor and pathetic schmuck and wastes huge amounts of money on VR one is still a poor and pathetic schmuck after the session. But I can say the same about people who bet against a computer connected to a slot machine and typically spend a big chunk of their Social Security or retirement income. Maybe VR can be used for learning experiences, as is done in flight simulations. Because I no longer live in either the Dallas or San Francisco areas I can no longer reasonably expect to take the flight that gives me a view of Yosemite, Vegas (it is impressive at night), and the Grand Canyon. VR could offer me that nostalgia as I may be stuck for the rest of my life in a farming community in which I am a misfit even if I was born there.
Spending real money on Candy Crush while neglecting things more important is pitiable.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.