The Virtual Future

by William Sims Bainbridge

The newest communication technologies are profoundly changing the world's politics, economies, and cultures, but the specific implications of online game worlds remain mysterious.  The Virtual Future employs theories and methods from social science to explore nine very different virtual   The Matrix Online , Tabula Rasa , Anarchy Online , Entropia Universe , Star Trek Online , EVE Online, Star Wars Galaxies , World of Burning Crusade , and The Chronicles of Riddick .  Each presents a different picture of how technology and society could evolve in coming centuries, but one theme runs through all of them, the attempt to escape the Earth and seek new destinies among the stars.  Four decades after the last trip to the moon, a new conception of spaceflight is emerging.  Rather than rockets shooting humans across vast physical distances to sterile rocks that lack the resources to sustain life, perhaps robot space probes and orbiting telescopes will glean information about the universe, that humans can then experience inside computer-generated environments much closer to home.  All nine of these fantastically rich multiplayer masterpieces have shown myriads of people that really radical alternatives to contemporary society could exist, and has served as a laboratory for examining the consequences.  Each is a prototype of new social forms, a utopian subculture, and a simulation of technologies that have yet to be invented.  They draw upon several different traditions of science fiction and academic philosophy, and they were created in several nations.  By comparing these nine role-playing fantasies, we can better consider what kind of world we want to inhabit in the real future.

212 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2011

Reviews

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm starting to believe the guy is insane

and oddly zero humans have reviewed this book

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The Virtual Future employs theories and methods from social science to explore nine very different virtual futures:

The Matrix Online
Tabula Rasa
Anarchy Online
Entropia Universe
Star Trek Online
EVE Online
Star Wars Galaxies
World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade
The Chronicles of Riddick

Each presents a different picture of how technology and society could evolve in coming centuries, but one theme runs through all of them, the attempt to escape the Earth and seek new destinies among the stars.

Rather than rockets shooting humans across vast physical distances to sterile rocks that lack the resources to sustain life, perhaps robot space probes....

All nine of these fantastically rich multiplayer masterpieces have shown myriads of people that really radical alternatives to contemporary society could exist, and has served as a laboratory for examining the consequences.

Each is a prototype of new social forms, a utopian subculture, and a simulation of technologies that have yet to be invented.

They draw upon several different traditions of science fiction and academic philosophy, and they were created in several nations.

By comparing these nine role-playing fantasies, we can better consider what kind of world we want to inhabit in the real future.

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The guy is a genius to say, wow videogames meets sci-fi meets Bainbridge's first love The Sociology of Spaceflight, with a whole mess of strangely crazy.

This fall, his book on Anime Sex Robots created by Klaus Schwab come out, unless James Bond puts a stop to it.