Declan Trezise

Detica

NerveCentre manager

Peter,
Once again you choose to end on the old chestnut of the bleak future vision of "Man vs. Machine" which we cannot help but lose. I have however recently envisioned a whole new frightening concept which perhaps echoes the luddite uprisings during the industrial revolution.
You wrote in your last blog entry about the increasing prominence of virtual avatars representing real humans online. I find myself reading (ever more frequently - especially on the BBC) of the dangers of MMORPGs and their ability to suck the life out people one 18 hour 'raiding' session at a time.
My fear is that people will increasingly choose the virtual over the real as the hyper-real exaggerations of the virtual become far more appealing than drudgery of real-life. There will be celebrations as the virtual unites parts of the world thus far separated by geography, race, religion etc. and I'm sure within my lifetime I will live to see the story of the child who is born to only ever live his life plugged into the virtual world experiencing life without the differentiation between real and virtual.
The problem I forsee is the conflict between people who choose never to enter the virtual world (physcially having to work to support the frail bodies of those choosing to live full-time in the virtual world) and those living the high-life in the clean and merry ethereal playground of the virtual where your hit-points regenerate and your face is a pretty as you desire. I don't know how this dynamic will effect the world's politics, cultures and climate but I can be pretty sure there'll be conflict as ever there is when one ideology butts up against another.
The AI's that exist in the virtual world will however not care a jot whether they're interacting with a biological neural network or a silicon based one - we'll both look the same in the virtual world. As ever I predict Man will be his own worst enemy.