Caprica, Gamer, & Surrogates: Overlooked Benefits Of Virtual Worlds.
 

A good article that was recently posted on IEET.

Caprica, Gamer, & Surrogates: Overlooked Benefits of Virtual Worlds

Virtual worlds really will do wonders to help people connect with each other. Like-minded people can finally experience their common dreams and fantasies together, or express feelings that they usually would not in the real world, surrounded by people who don't think the same way. Like everyone here, managing to experience a tangible Pandora together. :D

Do want... :)

I told them invading the NC was good for our health...

I don't like it. Pandora is awesome, yes; but I still prefer living here rather than a fantasy.

It's something you feel once you've experienced the real world beauty. Sorry for the people who can't understand this, but I'll be here while they're connected to a Second-Life-like reality.

I know the beauty of this world... it just doesn't compare to Pandora in the same way. I'd take Pandora any day, even if it was artificial.

Transhumanism - shudder - "We will assimilate you!" is what comes to my mind.

I see it that way - either we want to be humans and as such should not get lost in VR (maybe use it as a tool occasionally, but that is hard to manage if you think of gaming). Or we aspire to go beyond being human and incorporate technology completey and forever into a new species which either is physical (human/machine bodies) or virtual (uploaded or artificial). Maybe that is evolution, but I do not like this particularly.

meh, transhumanism is voluntary, part of most philosophies is that some people who don't want to change will exist, and they have to be respected.

Wouldn't it be awesome... a ToS meetup on Pandora as Na'vi without ever leaving home... DO WANT :)

Such a philosophy is nice, but it is rather utopian. If technology or biotech is available to "enhance" people, it will in the long run become a requirement just as any other technology. Seriously - if you live now in a flat in the city without a car, do not know anything on computers, do not watch TV and have no clue on how to operate electronic devices - do you think you could participate in society, have a job or even survive?
Try living without a cellphone - people do not even call landlines anymore and there are ever fewer public telephones around.

Same goes with all coming technology - if you can have genetic enhancements, neuroimplants or whatever nightmare people will come up with, soon it will be a job requirement to have them, you cannot talk to people anymore without them and so forth. Going a bit SciFi now, but you may need neurointerfaces to operate computers or cars or you use them to communicate instead of phones.

Sure, you can take yourself out of it, but this also means dropping out of society. If that is what it takes, I will do so, but I do not think many will do the same - mostly out of fear. People will go with it because society demands it from them, not because they like it.

Few things are voluntary in our society and economy!

Yeah - it would be a nice fantasy spectacle and interesting experience. But not much more. Real live meetups would be more interesting than a fancy MMORPG (is that the right acronym?)

DO WANT ALSO.

But on the other hand has anyone seen the movie Surrogate? Its a very sad movie and it makes a lot of sense...

Yeah it's a movie that really does expose human paranoia of other humans, human efforts to hide their true image (Bruce Willis' wife in the movie) and efforts to cheat death.

Great movie though. :)

Very good movie. I recommend it to everyone :P

There are people who do by choice. Yes, their options are limited, but the limitations are all things that didn't exist before those were developed, they never lost any opportunities they would have otherwise had.

There will always be a place for existing technologies in those applications, because not everyone will be willing to go the same way, or as far. If some people aren't interested in improving themselves, then the majority of philosophies recognise that and their rights must be respected too.

That is not really true. Lets see - I am not using a cellphone 95% of the time. So what problems compared to lets say 15 years ago do I have? People will not call me at home/work, they will try on the cellphone and if it is off they will think I do not want to talk to them. If I want to meet with some people in the city, there will not be a precise place and time laid out to meet, as everyone assumes one can call the cellphone at that point. And finally if I want to call someone while in the city, I have a hard time finding a public phone, let alone one that works with coins instead of a magnetic card.
As a result, people get downright angry at me for not having a cellphone working at all times. Sure, I can do without, but the fact that everyone else relies on that technology has the consequence that this kind of behaviour is not understood, seen as unpolite or complicated. So indeed, I may miss some opportunities by that.

Another one is buying cigarettes - I do not smoke, but I have noticed, that you need a bank account and a magnetic card now to buy cigarettes from a vending machine.

And I don't even want to go into jobs - if you do not keep up with technology, many jobs are closed to you and the ones that do not require this technology are fading away and/or are getting paid less and less. So there is definitely a pressure to follow new technologies. And this will also be true for neuroimplants and other "human enhancements".

Very limited so. Sure, people may be accepted, as long as they can manage to do with a world that regards them as exotic, backwards, unwilling to participate in society. As a result, the place will be on the fringes of society - always eyed with suspicion. At least our "western" society does that. There are people here living basically as nomads like the sinti and roma in the past. Or they live in trailers, moving every couple of months or aears. These are bascially "hippies", forming nice social bonds and do away without much of the current technology. So maybe some have cellphones, there may also be a laptop around but its all rather limited. So what is the situation? They have a hard time getting any jobs (without a "proper" adress or maybe a bank account), they get harassed by the police (for parking violations or on suspicion of drug use) and nobody wants to give them a place to put their home. Ok, that is exaggerating it a bit, but the fact is, that such problems occur more frequently than if you do the conformity thing and go with all the "improvements" that come along.

What I'm saying is, that it is surely possible, but it is not encouraged and it can actually be quite hard to skip technological "advances"... it is not really a neutral thing that people can adopt voluntarily or not.

But then, if you prefer older technology... for everyone who wishes they lived 10 years ago, there is someone who wishes they did 20 years ago, or 50, or 200.. it's ironically the same as development, some people will just never be happy.