Yesterday Zoltan asked, sensibly enough, what are the potential dangers of virtual reality. This is a topic I’ve thought about a lot, but one that is difficult to discuss properly, because it is far too easy to sound alarmist.<\/p>\n
After all, the possibility that something might<\/i> happen is very different from the probability that it will<\/i> happen. We see this in other spheres as well.<\/p>\n
For example, in the U.S. a lot of people drive cars, and every one of those cars has the potential to become a lethal weapon. Yet only a small percentage of people end up around running anyone over.<\/p>\n
What’s the connection? Well, imagine if we lived in a world where cars had not been invented. Then somebody says, “Imagine a future in which anybody could own a machine that they could easily use to kill other people.”<\/p>\n
In a world where cars didn’t exist, such a possibility — presented as a hypothetical — might seem terrifying, since the distinction between “could kill other people” and “will kill other people” might not be so clear. Therefore the act of handing so much power for destruction to so many individuals could seem like an act of insanity.<\/p>\n
So before I start talking about the potential dangers of virtual reality, I think I should make it clear that I don’t think all of these terrible things are actually going to happen. As new technologies emerge, societies have a tendency to readjust their customs and laws accordingly, and things don’t usually end up going completely to hell.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Yesterday Zoltan asked, sensibly enough, what are the potential dangers of virtual reality. This is a topic I’ve thought about a lot, but one that is difficult to discuss properly, because it is far too easy to sound alarmist. After all, the possibility that something might happen is very different from the probability that it … Continue reading “Virtual dystopias”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15712"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15712"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15712\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15714,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15712\/revisions\/15714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}