A physicist I like a lot is professor Michiu Kaku. In a recent lecture he speaks about wearing the Internet, as he jokingly (but not so much) puts it. He explains that in the near future we'll wear "Internet contact lenses" and so, with a simple blink, we'll be able to create a completely virtual reality around us. Eventually even the sense of touch will be perfectly simulated for us to feel what we are imagining to touch. Totally interesting, mind-blowing...Wow! As usual, the more rational part of my mind immediately makes me to wonder: WHY? Why do we need to have a virtual reality? Why do scientists want to create it? "Pro bono publico" (For the public good), as the Romans would say? I don't think so! Spending tons of money for research, experiments, tests? And, once we can blink and believe that we are hiking on the Himalayas, then what? Okay, you may say that you will have a wonderful experience, otherwise impossible. I accept that. But then, what will you do with your real life? Do you think that once you can choose to live in a perfect, fictitious world, you'll willingly go back to and stay in your daily routine... work, house, worry about money, fights in the family etc.? If you have seen the movie "Surrogates" you have an idea of what I am talking about. A scary future indeed, where human beings will be less and less who they are and, instead of trying to improve themselves, they will just wear a cap or lenses and live a fake life in a fake world. My favorite author, Anthony de Mello,SJ, spoke of "a paper life in a paper world" more than thirty years ago. Prophecy?
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