cher@ksr.com (Mike Cherepov) (12/14/90)
It seems that virtual reality has the potential to affect the goals and uses of nanotech, especially considering that VR's payoff appears nearer. Nanotech might not bother with clothing, architecture and other physical gadgetry which could be simulated cheaper in VR. VR might rescue a fast nano-brain from its informational deprivation. This suggests a picture of Earth populated by megabrain colonies plugged into their virtual reality systems, their physical needs taken care of by macro and nano-robots. Energy, information services, tele- communications and entertainment are all-important, transportation is in decline, procreation is obsolete... Mike Cherepov [A *pure* VR society is at a significant evolutionary disadvantage vis-a-vis competing real-world societies. I suggested a variant in the Utility Fog which allows continuously variable intermediates between VR and RW. That might be stable. --JoSH]