The Future is Coming On: Part One

The lights are out, the keyboard glows an electric blue matching the color of the mouse, and the headphones fit so comfortably on my ears I do not realize they are there. The screen is filled with a nightmarish vision of a future in which nuclear war has occurred. The landscape before my eyes changes, the screen is no longer there, I enter this reality. A reality were I’m born and go through the process of growing up, choosing my station in life. Experience the reality of friendship, love, and betrayal.

Then something happened, something changed. My life was disrupted; I am alone in a wasteland I do not recognize. Feeling alienated I begin to explore, survive. Worried more about my next meal and having a mattress to sleep on than anything else in my life…

No, this is not just some Lovecraftian dream of the future of our world, it is Fallout 3. It has inspired a lot of my thinking and writing over the past couple of weeks.  

After playing for about 30 minutes or so I find myself in that world, 99% of my senses are focused in this virtual world. The experience is similar to what happens when you enter a trance state. The “real-world” ceased to exist for the mystic and the “virtual” or trance world becomes the dominate reality. 

Gaming has taken on a new life. It’s no longer the gaming of the 20^th century; it’s a new world now. And like when Columbus discovered the new world we are realizing many things; we are not alone in this discovery, there is more to this new world than we thought possible. This new world is what we make it. It can easily be formed into any image we desire.

I’m not just talking about sandbox style games such as Minecraft and Second Life. I’m talking about complex single player FPS games such as Fallout 3 or MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft or Eve Online.

We are judged as a culture in the 21^st century by our various forms of entertainment; movies, TV, video games, and even music. It’s all becoming much more “futuristic”, not to mention the portability and availability of media is our culture has grown exponentially in the past decade. 

No Maps for These Territories  

Science fiction always predicts the future and the world we live in now was predicted by the cyberpunk writers of the 80s and early 90s.

When William Gibson envisioned and described “cyberspace” I don’t think he envisioned it in its current state. The dominant paradigm in our society has shifted and it has shifted so quickly some people do not have the know how or ambition to keep up with it.

Truth is indeed stranger than fiction and as Gibson said, “keeps getting jacked up on us a fairly regular basis”. Not only are we writing our own future but it’s coming true before our eyes. We are no longer predicting the future; we are creating it. 

I hope to continue the ideas in this post as a series, but need to know from you dear reader; what would you like to hear me expand upon in the next post of this series? I am going to keep with the theme of the future and how is exploding into the present but that is a very broad subject. Unless you comment and give me some feedback I am going to to keep rambling about things that you may or may not want to read. So let me know and I will give you a mention in the next post or three.