Appliances in a virtual world

There are many things in the physical world that are not needed in a shared virtual world. Some examples are washing machines, lawn mowers, dishwashers and automobiles.

These are very familiar objects, which we all grew up with, yet they would serve no actual purpose in a socially shared virtual world.

So should we keep them when we are in such worlds?

I find it to be a fascinating question. In a way, it is a question about the nature of fiction itself.

In a movie, we see a character load a dishwasher, and we know it is fake. Yet the presence of the dishwasher, and witnessing the act of loading it, allows us to lose ourselves in the fantasy of the movie’s fictional universe.

I suspect that something similar will happen as VR worlds become mainstream. Physical devices will be reiterated as literary devices.

But what happens when more and more of our daily lives become virtually experiences while being increasingly automated behind the scenes? Will we still hold on to appliances that have become obsolete?

Will a dishwasher eventually become like the quill pen — something quaintly amusing that we love to see in fiction, but that we no longer expect to see in reality?

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