The Ghost in the Machine - Or Where Are We Going, Part 2

Our lives are increasingly being lived virtually.  As well as a literal, we also leave an electronic footprint.  In the younger generation this dual life is even more strongly realised.

For those of us who have taken part in the internet revolution, it feels strange to think that moving forward there are two versions of yourself - the 'real' you, and the virtual you.  Sometimes I think of the 'virtual me' that I have left as a computerised echo across the World Wide Web.  In my virtual life, I have taken part in many conversations and debates online.  I've shot the breeze, reacted to the issues of the day, told stories, argued, joked around, played my favourite music, lost my temper, made friends, made enemies and flirted. 

Indeed, if the diaries of such as Samuel Pepys have caused such fascination with their snapshots of 17th century life in London, what will it be like for future generations to look back at us?  As the first 'cyber generation', I would imagine that we will have a certain hold over the imagination by default.

If future generations chose, and as technology advances, I would imagine they would be able to make a perfectly serviceable facsimile of my virtual self, warts and all, that they would be able to interact with if that was their fancy.  For all I know I may have just given one of my descendents that very idea! I can only hope that my simulacrum will offer a modicum of entertainment.

We have seen films such as The Matrix, Total Recall and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (among many, many other movies and books) play with the idea of living in an artificially constructed world, and now we stand at the shoreline of that virtual universe, and the watermark is slowly rising as we witness the digitization of existence.

I wrote Where Are We Going part 1 some thirteen or fourteen years ago for a website I hosted that has long been consigned to the virtual dustbin (thank you AOL).  In this blog I speculated that one day the last 'physical' human would download themselves into a Universe contained within a subatomic cube that would then be cast adrift and float through the cosmos (if it was small enough it perhaps could  even survive the theoretical Heat Death of the Universe, thus granting us immortality).  When I look around I see we are well on course for that possible future.

I can imagine the horrified thoughts that may be coursing through the mind of a reader as they contemplate this future, trapped in a pseudo reality where you will never feel the wind upon your face or watch a sunrise and stuff like that - but the way I look at it as long as uncontrolled human interactions remain a part of your world, there will always be something there to stop you getting bored.  Besides which life, and how it is lived by that time, will have evolved to such an extent we can't know or judge what those cats will be finding groovy.

And if they get that bored they can always talk to my ghost!