Transumanar

Reality 2.0: A new world in the making

Reality 2.0 is still in development and preliminary alpha testing. It will have a unprecedented degree of graphical video-realism and a very, very realistic physics engine. It will offer all features of current VR worlds like Second Life, Kaneva or the forthcoming Sony’s Home: instant teleport to remote locations, IM, built-in editing environment to create your own things out of thin air and customize your own avatar, multiple avatars per user, intelligent NPCs and the possibility to acquire all sorts of near-magic powers. Reality 2.0 will be much more realistic and addictive than current MMOGs and permit users working and playing in-world without ever leaving it. Living and working in Reality 2.0 will be, as a matter of fact, much more interesting and fun than whatever you can do in good old RL (Real Life) as we know it.

I am sure you have already understood that Reality 2.0 is, in fact, good old RL with some enhancements that will be developed over the next few decades.

IM (Instant Messaging) will be implemented by read-write brain implants linked to the wireless network. Think something to tell someone, your thoughts are captured and processed by your implant, addressed to the recipient through the net, and appear in her mind. A popular name for this process is telepathy. Reading thoughts and memories from a brain and writing thoughts and memories back to a(nother) brain or a computational network (neural interfacing) will also permit cutting and pasting entire personalities and making backup copies of human minds (mind uploading). This is how teleport may work: the entire contents of your mind are copied from where you are and beamed to where you want to go.

We also need the capability to create objects out of thin air like we do in Second Life. The development of molecular nanotechnology will permit the development of utility fogs: live air filled with zillions of tiny (nanoscale) machines able to communicate over a network and link to each other to reproduce any shape or material. With utility fogs, the fabric of physical reality will be used as a construction materials for objects and avatars (bodies). (If and) when they are developed, utility fogs will effectively lift the boundaries between physical and virtual realities.

Many Second Life users, especially in the “first generation”, were mainly motivated by the wish to change things they did not like in their RL. In particular their body shape, age and gender. I must be one of the few people who are middle-aged fat guys in both RL and SL. But many give their avatars younger and better looks, and some choose for their SL avatars the gender that they wish to have in RL but has been stolen by a stupid biological accident. Sooner or later, we will be able to do this in RL too, when it will evolve to Reality 2.0: we will be able to change physical bodies like we change clothes today, and wear a new body like we wear a new shirt.

In writing this I am identifying with the computational processes that take place inside my mind and regarding my physical body as something external outside me, like my car. Of course I know that things are more complex and there are many feedback loops between body and mind, with chemical and hormonal things happening in the body that influence the activity of the mind, but I do not really consider weather-induced bad moods as central to being me. If my thinking were never degraded by a headache, I think I would gain a lot without losing anything important. So I think I (the I that matters) am information, and look forward to the possibility to decoupling this information from biology.

Once mind cut-copy-paste technology is developed, it will mean effective immortality. When you are killed by a monster in Entropia Universe, you wake up at the nearest revival station where, we can imagine, the most recent copy of your mind file is reloaded to a physical body similar to the last one you were wearing, built on the fly by a utility fog. This is how I imagine the unwritten fictional machinery behind Entropia Universe works, and I think Reality 2.0 will also have a revival feature. It will be necessary because, while the monsters in Entropia Universe are very dull, Reality 2.0 will be populated by conscious, thinking NPCs as smart as us, often smarter than us, and occasionally much smarter than us. Of course, the same technology that will permit creating supersmart AIs will also be used to become smarter ourselves, by merging with intelligence boosters. In Reality 2.0, we will be as smart as we need or want to be (it may cost money of course).

Ok, so when will Reality 2.0 be released? An alpha version is in the making in all research laboratories where nanotechnology, neurotechnology, advanced biotechnology and artificial intelligence technology are being developed. Let me refer to these as transhumanist technologies. Not in the sense that only transhumanists are engaged in the development of human enhancement technologies, but rather in the sense that transhumanists take Reality 2.0 seriously and view it as something *good*.

So when? My best guess is in the second half of this century, but it may well be sooner and some experts think it will be sooner. So cross fingers or, better, follow the last link above to join and donate some time or money. Waiting for Reality 2.0, watch this space for the announcement of Reality 3.0.

Posted by G.P. on 03/31 at 08:38 AM
English • Views • (3) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink • Print