One day avatars will rule the Net : they'll take over social networking sites, allowing their human creators to be engaged in more leisurely pursuits, like video gaming or mini golf. Immortality will be guaranteed while solar and wind power, will keep the huge datacenters that make up the Net running.
Huge corporations will assure that every avatar will spend a considerable amount of cash on virtual stuff and the tidbits that keep their human personas happy and comfortable, robots will take care of things and everything will run smoothly as never before.
Outsiders will live in forgotten areas, where energy will be scarce, life will be very much like it was in most of the 20th century, but that’s where all the adrenalin dependents will be, also new ideas and glorious avatars will come out of this, like beautiful fish from muddy ponds, the Corporations will not let them go to waste and through their net of spies, they will clone them and paste them to the Net, per omnia saecula saeculorum, harmless, juiceless.
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It’s funny how American commercial cinema has an eye for this things, in The Surrogates, humanoid “bots” live life in our place, as us so to say, they take all the risks, they are the projections we want others to see of us, as usual on American commercial movies the plot is thin and wild chases and big explosions take its place for the rest of the movie. But the idea remains, we all know - Iraqis and Afghans in their flesh, that today war is mostly fought by droids, it’s not difficult to anticipate that tomorrow they’ll take more and more functions away from humans.
You can still go to the mall, have your friends over to the weekend barbecue and at the same time be engaged in a war thousands of miles away. Ah, and it’s a videogame that pays your monthly bills…
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That's silly, Jooey. Generals don't fight in Afghanistan, soldiers do. Missiles are thrown from 1 continent to another, from neighbour to neighbour, everyday. Avatars die along with their owners.
ReplyDeleteAvatars don't necessarily need to die with humans, Maria Isabel, they're pieces of code, that can, theoretically at least, redesign themselves when needed...
ReplyDeleteMy point with soldiers, Isabel, is that they're becoming more and more virtual, videogamers in fact, being replaced in the field by droids...
Afghanistan will be a showcase for this technologies and the efectiviness of its use...the present american comander in the country wants more troops, I think the Pentagon would prefer to have more drones...
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ReplyDeleteIn last October alone 55 american servicemen died in Afhganistan, hardly a droid war. Too many people died, too many will continue to die in battlefields the world over, I was talking possibilities only...but take my word, droids are here to stay.
ReplyDeleteAvatars : one day all our bodily functions can be stabilized, having cloned organs at the ready for any problem that might arise and perform the required transplant. Only the brain will keep on working, keeping the avatars busy, roaming the Net, for as long as one wishes too, or as long as one has capabilities to.
Living virtual should be fun, even now we already have Facebook divorces...