Last month, Linden Lab CEO Philip Rosedale posted an interesting blog entry titled "Space Exploration".
He begins by speaking of his (not unusual) childhood interest in space exploration, then goes on to say:
“I am convinced that in a strong sense I have really achieved what I had dreamed of as a kid... The way we did this was by building the space [Second Life], rather than the spaceship.”
Second Life entrepreneur Anshe Chung raises the following big picture thought in the comments (see the entire post for more context):
“I always wondered why all those aliens out there haven't tried to contact us yet. Now I know this sounds mad: But maybe they all migrated to their own simulated spaces, interfaced or uploaded their minds to their grid and completely lost interest in reality? Maybe the physical world is nothing more than one necessary base platform to run their sims?”
ASF President John Smart has carefully suggested something like this for a long time, most recently in his response to the Edge Reality Club's question, “What do you believe but cannot prove?”
From John's response:
“…If hospitable conditions for organic life are ubiquitous, as many astrobiologists suspect, and if life must on average develop complexity at accelerating rates, why is our visible universe and galaxy not saturated with observable intelligence? This question, Fermi's Paradox, led me to surmise that outer space is a "rear view mirror" on the growth trajectory of universal intelligence. Our visible universe is a history of older, slower, and simpler computational systems that came before us. It appears to be the domain of the past, not the future.”
In other words, it seems much more likely that evolution will become the domain of computation and intelligence ripping through 'inner space', not of large, physical bodies and biology slowly roaming around in 'outer space'. This is one of the most profound bifurcations in future thought (the inner/outer split), and it always leads to good discussion (that more and more seem to err on the side of inner...).
i'm surprised you didn't include some recent theories that our universe is hologramatic; in essence, nothing but 3D data on a 2D plane. perhaps virtual worlds are attractive because they're closer to our "nature"? how's that?
Posted by: csven | April 19, 2005 at 12:44 PM