How Far Are We From The Matrix?

Last night, I watched 'The Matrix' yet again.What a film, and surely one of those landmarks that sends shivers down the back of your spine.

The Matrix was where I personally got my taste for virtual worlds. From watching how those who understood it could change the fabric of reality and mold the world they inhabited around them. For myself, I came into virtual worlds with the desire to create my own perfect environment. As did many others.

AE Or Reality

Spot the difference?

Then I realised that it was not this Artificial Environment I wanted changed, but my own reality. I wanted a better reality, an increased reality - after all, even in The Matrix, things were not fundamentally different. They were just added to and manipulated by the participants who understood the reality of the environment. To improve their circumstances - and yes, break free of the constraints of a false society.

Many comments can be made about societies as we have them here, but I will leave that alone. Instead I will comment on the utopia of virtual worlds - or rather, the perception of a utopia.

The Truth
The Matrix showed us a bleak future, one where we are all battery cells for machines (in fact that could be true of society - itself an endless controlling machine all around us). However there was an escape, but it came at a price - a high price. That of understanding the truth.

The truth for all virtual worlds, online games and social media is that you cannot escape from yourself. Wherever you are, whatever tool you use, you take yourself with you. These social media allow us to reflect ourselves through many more people that we would normally have in our lifetime. Yet all are embedded into the very societies that we already belong.

Respect
If you interact with people online, respect them. Realise that - beyond pixels on the screen, there are humans too.

What We Do Affects Others

Behind the avatars and their 'handles' (CBers from long ago will recognise this term - it refers to a chosen name to represent yourself, as you would have other think of you), you will have correct etiquette in cyberspace if you treat others with the respect you want to receive yourself -  offer integrity and transparency.

We are a long way from The Matrix, and in some way I am glad, because if we treated others with that level of inhumanity, then we are lost - but in other ways, we are just starting the ride.

 Technically Speaking
 Technically, Second Life and its sister platforms are the MS-DOS of virtual worlds. The prototypes and beginners. Infants ready to walk.

Just as MS-DOS was overtaken by Windows, virtual worlds as we know them in their pixelated forms, will be replaced by a superior technology, easier, faster and cheaper (in terms of processing power and financial cost) to use.

It is my belief that in this world, as in 'The Matrix', we will primarily use virtual replicas of our real life space and want that as our base. From this safety we will venture out to the rest of the world, both real and imaginary.

We are all waiting for The Matrix facsimile of virtual worlds. Somewhere someone will be building them, perhaps even now.