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Name: Mitchell Stokely
From: Texas
Bio: Web Developer
Area of Expertise: Technology Developer/Administrator
Topic: Community/Culture
Headline: "Super-World" Cyber Game Sucks us All In
Nutshell: A new "role-playing" virtual world game, based on current military technology, evolves and makes addicts of us all, world-wide
Vision:I have no doubt that the next "Microsoft" of our time will evolve from a singular remarkable vision concerning gaming and escapism in the next century; a virtual game will evolve for everyone, that will be so large, and so real, and so huge and imaginative that many people around the world will literally "work-to-play" in this highly addictive cyber-world. It will be so all-encompassing and so connected to us and our lives (and the new mobile internet system), that it will travel with us and be our center of escape from reality (much like games are for some people now) and one will have "two lives," and because the second will in most cases, allow us to play out a virtual persona our real world cannot, many people will pay big dollars to be "trapped" in its huge multiverse of personalities and adventures many hours of the day. (do we not already do that with television?) It may eventually be like the "hollodeck?" in Star Trek, but the next 50 years it will evolve into something simpler yet quite powerful. The money involved will be in the trillions and managed by a huge corporate conglomerate eventually, and possible the goverment at some point, and equal the same excitement and dollars involved that the space travel predictions most are now making for that industry now unfolding, yet affordable enough for the poor and low income that even they can pay to play.
It will be the "new legal drug" of the latter part of this century and I predict a serious addictive problem for the generations after that, as the cyber world causes our real world life to suffer. But who knows…it’s still exciting stuff for the immediate future. Hope will lie in a major deconstruction of the modern world and a return to the natural world before most get free from this expensive and addictive slavery of the mind. I have hope.
Date Submitted: November 10, 2004
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