I have been designing a VR environment, which does not exist in the real world. There is a chance, however, that it might one day exist in the real world.
I am not sure how to classify my experience of walking around within and spending time exploring this environment. What relationship does it have to my experience of the physical world?
If this VR environment never gets built in the physical world, then it is merely a thing of exploration and conjecture. Like any novel or movie, it exists only in the collective minds of those who experience it.
But what if it does end up getting built? What if it eventually becomes a physical place where I end up living some fraction of my actual life?
Will that retroactively change the meaning of my current experience? Will I have, in some real sense, gotten a jump on living in my future life?
And what if my VR experience today causes me to make a change in the design or construction of that future physical place? It would be fascinating if a sensorily immersive yet entirely imaginary experience of today should end up causing a significant change to how I physically inhabit my future reality.
As VR becomes an increasingly common part of our everyday lives, I suspect that such questions will become more important. They may eventually become central questions of our existence.