VIRTUAL REALITY DANGERS

We all know that virtual reality is just around the corner. The day's coming when men with goggles will be able to enjoy the company of  a beautiful virtual woman right in their own living room. 

It's a computer thing. 

Of course the kind of classy men who frequent Theory Corner want something more than just beauty. They'll want a sweet, intelligent girl... a girl who'll listen to all their problems and...yes...agree with them on just about everything.  Ahhh, that'll be nice, but....

....but one day it's bound to occur, even to the elevated men who come here, that three girls (above) listening to their problems would be better than one. 

And a dozen would be better than three! Yikes! You'll hock everything you've got to buy more RAM!

The day will come when you'll have a house full of virtual women. They'll all be glad to see you and they'll all laugh at your jokes, but don't try to touch them...they don't really exist.

Wait'll you try to use your car.

Or brush your teeth.

How much flossing do you think you'll get done?

 Of course other men will have virtual companions, too. You'll find yourself wondering,  is the male doctor who's operating on me...really paying attention?

Maybe. You'll never know.

We have to face the fact the entire male gender might become hopelessly addicted to the presence of virtual women. Civilization could fall apart.

But let's not be pessimistic. Science has a cure, if we have the courage to apply it. B. F. Skinner said that the only way to extinguish conditioning is by counter-conditioning. Alright then,  let's do that.

Goggles will have to programmed for the extreme opposite type of female...the kind that would discourage virtual addiction. 

Only great mental pain will be able to override great mental pleasure.

Good Luck!

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Oh, yes...on another subject...a word about the Fourth of July:

THE MOST UNDER-RATED TECHNOLOGY

My vote for the most under-rated technology, the sleeper that's most likely to completely alter the future in 50 years or so, is virtual reality. VR isn't very visible in the consumer market right now. I guess the novelty wore off after it was introduced 15 years ago in video arcades.


The headsets were clunky and the graphics were pretty poor. Back then I thought game companies would go after VR, and they did for a short time, but interest wained.


I like the films about VR: "Lawnmower Man," "Dreamscape," "Vituosity," and "The Matrix." In a way I like Lawnmower man the best, even though it was objectively the worst of the films I mentioned. The other films posited that we'd want virtual reality to mimic real life. Only Lawnmower Man posited that we might prefer to live in artificial, man-made worlds which resemble abstract video games like Mario Brothers.



One day, maybe in our kids' lifetime, quantum computers will give us the power to create whatever worlds we like. Almost certainly a lot of people will prefer VR to the real world. Some might not even feel like eating and may starve to death. If I could fly, if I could reach for things with arms as long as football fields, if I could be an insect or a T-Rex, if I could sleep in a bird's nest or be a fish in a lagoon, if I could have unlimited sex and explore the atomic world by flying through molecules....if I could do all that, maybe I wouldn't want to leave the virtual world either.


On the other hand, maybe reality is the ultimate virtual world. There are so many weird and unpredictable mysteries, even in a leaf. Maybe the more realistic VR gets, the more people will learn to crave and appreciate reality. Who knows?