Here’s a fun question; if we could teleport back in time and nick a random science fiction author from the past and drag them back to our time, what would be the most amazing technological advance we could show them? In other words; what’s the most mind blowing thing we’ve made in the last, oh, hundred years.
The question was bouncing around my vent (Uh, multi-person phone. Voice chat room. Something like that, Google it if you must.) last night and the range of answers was surprisingly diverse. Oh, of course we had our wide range of handhelds with everyone making the obligatory connection to Star Trek and its little devices. Other people brought up the internet itself and some of the most astounding creations that have come along, either citing them alone or all together as the most mind blowing achievement.
I have to admit, they had my vote for a while. It’s commonplace enough now that we usually take it for granted, but sitting back and giving serious thought to Google maps and street view can leave you a bit daunted by the amount of work that went into it. That’s not even mentioning the vast sprawling social tools like Twitter and Facebook; connecting millions and millions of people with up to the second updates on their lives – all from the previously mentioned tiny handheld devices.
What could be even more impressive is the Wikipedia collection. Between the main site covering nearly every topic imaginable and a veritable host of fan sites dedicated to enthusiasts of specific topics; the sheer quantity of information out there is both awe inducing and surprisingly well maintained and accurate. All of the sites are tended to by moderators with nigh religious fervor after all, and only attract those who delight in the topic searched at hand. The internet could certainly have floored people who came before its creation. You have to remember, we now live in what they’re dubbing the Information Age, a huge part of which can be attributed to the development of the ‘net.
However I was finally swayed to games – which really shouldn’t be surprising, if there’s anything I’ve pondered the ramifications of more than the internet it’d be gaming culture and where it’s headed. Now of course I don’t mean something like Modern Warfare or the Halo games. It’s a very nice display of technology and would be quite impressive as a showcase to keep some one’s interest, but as far as core ideas go, they’re rather bland. It’s a shooting gallery in a box, really. The same route applies to RPG’s and their ilk; they’re basically really slow books with poorly written combat scenes (yes, I know, you could find them fun, but that doesn’t mean taking turns to throw punches in a fist fight makes any sort of sense). In this regard – conceptually – there’s one type that stands above them all; the MMO. Massively Multiplayer Online game.
The idea itself has been floating its way around sci-fi for a while. Virtual realities we could create and live in independently were a natural pull for writers hoping to find a simple way around the suspension of disbelief. It’s not without reason when you consider them, frankly. We’ve built entire worlds utterly separate from our own inside these games – worlds that are persistent, some of the best have day cycles, weather, mountain ranges, fields, forests, and cities. We have quite literally built entire societies inside there. Places where I can hook into a game from the comfort of my own home and activate an avatar of my own creation that only I can control, and walk around along side another avatar from a friend who lives thousands of miles away.
It’s that which I think would get the biggest impact. After all, you need to realize; it’s a concept almost beyond the imagination of some one a hundred years ago. The idea that they could have a world made entirely to our own design that’s readily accessible to millions of people. The biggest MMO out there currently has over twelve million active users. That’s more people than some nations! If you tried explaining this to a writer from way back when, they’d probably ask things like how many decades it took everyone working to build this one amazing virtual reality. At which point of course you’d have to say:
“One? Man, there’s thousands of them. All running at the same time. With a combined growing population they don’t even attempt to calculate anymore.”
At that point I think we would have achieved mind explosion.
Heh, screw the whole ‘I want my flying car’ mentality; look what we have made.
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