Sony Brings Real Life Matrix A Step Closer

Prison Planet | Mar 8, 2007  

All this paves the way for a potential Matrix-like scenario where people are literally plugged in to a falsely constructed reality. Whoever controls that Matrix thus controls the activities of its users and participation may eventually become mandatory, with babies subsequently being born directly into the matrix.

Sets precedent for future artificial utopias constructed to escape hellhole of real world

Sony is preparing to unveil a simulated reality world in which Playstation gamers can create a new life for themselves, complete with their own apartment, friends, movies, shopping and entertainment, bringing the reality of an actual matrix a step closer.

The technology to take a video capture of an individual, turn it into a kind of hologram and then beam it to the other side of the world and have that hologram interact with others already exists. Within the next fifteen years we are likely to see the transformation of online shopping to the point where buyers can actually walk through virtual reality stores and pick up and inspect the holograms of the products they are interested in.

Projecting even further down the line, simulated reality allied with hologram technology will allow individuals to attend social gatherings, educational classes, sports events and more without having to leave the comfort of their own home. Whether such events are actually taking place in the real world or are solely artificial creations of the virtual environment will be down to the discretion of the user.

All this paves the way for a potential Matrix-like scenario where people are literally plugged in to a falsely constructed reality. Whoever controls that Matrix thus controls the activities of its users and participation may eventually become mandatory, with babies subsequently being born directly into the matrix.

Or on the other hand, the Matrix could act as a kind of subscription based escapism, where users pay extortionate fees to exist inside a mock utopia in order to flee the horror of the real world.

This scenario was fictionalized in the popular 1990’s UK Sci-fi sitcom Red Dwarf, where the crew partake in a “Total Immersion Video Game” called Better than Life , a virtual reality paradise where one’s every demand is instantly gratified.

In the novel of the same name, the characters are unaware that they are living in an artificial reality and the system even causes the users to imagine semi-plausible explanations for strange events so that they never come to the realization that their life is a technologically induced hallucination. Meanwhile, the bodies of the users in the real world wither away and die while they are consciously locked into the game.

There will also be a prominent segment of the population, the Trans-Humanist movement, that will vociferously advocate the simulated reality nexus and call for those who refuse to participate to be punished and relegated to the fringes of society as some kind of caste sub-species.

A concurrent theme that runs throughout almost all dystopic futurist cinema and literature is the concept that technology is advancing at a rate far too quickly for humans to adequately judge its moral implications and eventual impact. Sony’s “Home” service is another small step towards a not so distant future in which human beings choose or are forced to exist inside a false reality, while a tiny elite claim the real world as their own, ruling over it as they please while the majority of humans are transfixed by the temptation to escape into a simulated environment.