The Tease of Things I Don't Need

Getting a Life

Tammy passed a piece along the other day accompanied by a fervent and naturally understandable wish that some people would get a life. The report was about a life sentence handed down in Shanghai over a murder. The reason for the murder? One gamer had loaned his virtual sword - an artifact in an online game - to a friend and the second man sold it to another player.

None of this surprises me, just as it likely doesn't surprise many of you once you give it some thought.

[Clarification: I presumed we'd all be on the same page with respect to the seeing the murder mentioned above as being a wrong act. I certainly wasn't chiding Tammy for the "get a life" comment, as the man's priorities were plainly, vastly out of order. He did, indeed, need some sort of reality check. Of course, I say that with the idea, too, that exactly the same thing would have applied if the killing had been over the wrongful resale of an actual metal sword or other physical object. Presumably the sword was a distinct item, however virtual, with its own provenance and properties, however virtual. What is wrong was that one person killed another over the theft of a thing, however virtual. It would be the same as if I won an original manuscript of a novel, loaned it to someone else, and he sold it to a third party.]

Many of us have been expecting this sort of thing for decades. The only thing that's surprised me a little is that it's been happening while we're at this level of technology. I likely underestimated the power of human imagination (more likely it's that I'm not a gamer by nature, and I hadn't thought about it in that competitive context) , and so didn't expect this sort of thing until we had come closer to full sensory-immersion technology.

At least since the late 1970s I've known that we'll eventually reach the point where virtual identities, set in virtual worlds, will become much more attractive to a significant and growing portion of a technologically-advanced society. Lives are complicated, and most of us find ourselves enmeshed in histories that more or less "happened" to us over the years by accident of birth onward, living in a world where we're generally small fry and people and circumstance make the process of self-reinvention difficult. How could the prospect of reinventing one's self in a strange and interesting world where one can develop supernatural powers, face fairly direct puzzles and opponents, receiving boosts to one's abilities with each solution -- how could that not appeal to many?

There have already been deaths linked at least tenuously to such virtual living, and the topic of addiction to online roleplaying games has become more well-established in the past six years or so.

Most people can handle it as a fun diversion, of course, and gamers have understandably been defensive about the issue, immediately recalling the way Dungeons and Dragons was similarly demonized decades ago, hitting a mainstream peak of derision with 1982s Mazes and Monsters, based on Rona Jaffe's book of the same name.

The difference between then and now is that D&D took much more work, both in terms of imaginative reach and game mechanics, and required several people of like minds to come together physically to play. So, while popular, it didn't reach as many people as quickly and easily. As technology makes it easier for people to boot up and plug in to rich visual landscapes, complete with sound and even theme music, and to interact with others doing the same from remote locations, each appearing in some fantasy form, it's obvious that an increasing number of people will try it out and more of them will find life as a magical adventurer more savory than their real lives. To the extent that people are able to maintain the finances to make it possible, an increasingly significant number of people will opt in to new lives and view the trappings of their old, non-virtual ones as nuisances and distractions. This will only become more common as the textures of these new worlds becomes richer, and the interfaces become more elaborate and natural to use.

It's coming. It's inevitable. It's not for everyone, but it will be for many, and for more and more as time goes on.

It was not so many years ago that while mentioning email and online discussions to an intelligent person only about 5 years older than myself that he openly waived it off as being a pale, shut-in's activity, vastly inferior to going out and being with people. Surely it was just some tragic, passing fad. Jump ahead to today, and I doubt he gets through his day without reading and responding to at least a few pieces of email, at least one or two of which each week are from people he's either never met in person -- and perhaps never even heard his voice.

Virtual living will be extolled for overcoming nearly all physical handicaps, allowing sentient beings to have the experience of doing things they would otherwise never be able to to, and to continue doing the same in seemingly peak condition perhaps up to the moment of death. Those who smirk at the topic now, believing the lines to be very clear, will be in for a rude awakening once the technology and social phenomenon has grown to the level that the definitions of reality and life are brought back onto the table for highly subjective reinspection and redefinition. People will have to face how subjective reality is in the first place, and in the end it's going to be a hard and perhaps even impossible sell trying to convince some people to accept life out in the physical world and in their natural bodies, with all their limitations, flaws, disease and deterioration. Besides, is it some isolated, delusional fantasy, when they're doing it in an environment populared by tens, hundreds of thousands of people and more -- people just as real and alive as they are?

Do we pull people out of monastic lives? Do we drag people out of their houses of worship and insist they stop dwelling on thoughts of Heaven? Each of which are aguably far more isolated and delusional places to dwell? Do we withold pain medications because they mask physical reality? Do we yank off people's artificial limbs because they are, in reality, crippled? Should we?

Convincing people that physical reality is superior to constructed ones will prove a tougher debate with many more shades of meaning than most today may realize.