Just how real is the Net?

[Blue]

We've been having a rather heated argument in the chat box that I figured should go here instead. That being, just how much of life in spent online, how many things would remain offline, and just what would be the draw of not being jacked into the Net?

[Sigfried Hunin]

My point of the argument is that you cannot feel, cannot truly experience what's going on in the Net. Prostitutes still exist, not just robotic wang-rubbers. Humans have a strong desire for human contact. People WANT to be around other people, and sometimes that's just not enough online.

We need to touch, feel, have intimate contact. Not only that, but humanity CRAVES novel nervous input. We drink, we do drugs, we exercise for the sheer joy of feeling the burn of it. Hell, how many physical hobbies do we have NOW even though we can do them virtually? Music, art, all of that we can synthesize in far more efficient and interesting ways than can be done with a physical form, but we still cling to physicality.

People still want to see live sports events, even though it's a far inferior experience to just watching the broadcast (we do that now, all the time. It's like, 500 dollars to go to a football game, despite the shit food, cold weather and the inability to actually tell what the hell is happening), people still want to be able to physically meet their friends and loved ones.

Hell, how many people have relationships that start on the internet? It's just not enough. It has to be REAL. And, as advanced as the Net will ever get, it just isn't real. No matter how realistic or whatever, you can't feel anything and that starkly contrasts it to the waking world.

[Tyr]

This really just needs a clarification from Meer on how imprinted/effective the Net actually is. It's a neural system, so one would assume it has access to the nerve system, which would cause one to think that it can emulate all human emotions, which would make real life moot, except most of the jobs that Meer specifically mentions.

Then he makes a point of prostitution being a real life sort of thing, which confuses me, since emulating pleasure would probably be priority number one in such a system.

So really, before getting into an argument, let's just wait for him to specify how deep the rabbit hole goes.



(although if the Net has access to your nerve system, that's about as real as real gets)

[Blue]

I argue the opposite line of thought. Think of how much more advanced videogames are now than 27 years ago. Now, imagine what would happen to a virtual-projection internet world in 27 years. I'm thinking that it won't be long before The Net will be able to provide even the physical stimulation of sex simply by sending electronic signals into one's brains. But, that isn't where my argument lies.

Firstly, the description of the world is that the Waking World is one of rain, hunger, train schedules, and orgasm. Other than that last, it seems like a pretty shit place to be, one that we as a race only live in now because there really isn't another option as immersive as reality. The description of The Net portrays it as being a place of glitz, glamous, and freedom. If I had a choice, I know which one I would choose to spend 90% of my free time in. And considering the U.S.'s increasinly sedentary lifestyle, I think that 60 some-odd years in the future, I would be with the vast majority of people.

Secondly, it's stated that unless a job actually requires physical interaction in reality, it's been outsourced to the internet. I can't imagine many jobs remain in reality with that description. Even with things like drugs and alcohol, one could merely use these while offline for a relatively short amount of time, then immediately jack back in to experience this wonderful Net world while in an altered state of mind. What sort of jobs would remain in reality when the virtual world is just so much better? Could even sports still require people to go outside, or would they be virtual representations of people, seemingly as real as anything offline, where one could sit comfortably at home and always watch the game from the ball is, no matter where it moves?

Hell, even with prostitution, I imagine people would order such online and remain online while some virtual girl does increasingly kinky things and the prostitute just gives them a handy-J.

[Sigfried Hunin]

Well, as Meer said, this is a democratic system. We're not here to idly try to interpret a 2 paragraphs primer on the world, we're here to make decisions about it. We're here to make the most interesting world to write in.

Just because something is in your nervous system doesn't mean that it can emulate feeling or senses. That's some excessively complicated crap and it might not have come along yet or if it has, it's rudimentary.

Just because a lot of the world is shitty doesn't mean that there isn't joy to be found in it. There's happy people in North Korea. They had bars in Russia when people were being hung in the streets. He's describing them dramatically, to help you understand a contrast, not laying down a dictate that everything is absolutely god-awful in the real world.

And yes, you can just do drugs and go back online. You can drink and go back online, but you can't go to a bar or, again, see something for real online. There is a thrill to being truly at a location when something happens. You can see a murder a million times on youtube, but when it happens right in front of you, it's different. That same goes for sports and fighting and everything else, there's a big difference when you're really there.

Again, people want and need real human contact. Me and my current girlfriend met online, and shockingly, that really wasn't enough. I wanted to be there with her, I wanted us to occupy the same space and breath the same air, even if we weren't actively interacting.

When the world is SO jacked in, people would even have an active rebellion to it at some level. They spend all day jacked into the net, moving around cranes and shit. I bet some (I'm not saying all, notice) would want to go the fuck outside and get a drink with their buddy.

Just because most JOBS exist in a virtual space doesn't mean that every goddamn thing is online. What's the purpose of a city if there is literally nothing done in a physical space? We'd just live in a bunker underground in little pods or something.

Now, my final point, it's not very interesting to write in a world that has no physical component. People wanted to write grounded characters with a dichotomy of power and mundanity, not write in a virtual computer space all the time. I will say, with 100% assurity, that I would not write in a setting where every single aspect of human interaction took place in a virtual space. It would get really fucking boring, really fucking fast.

[Blue]

In 27 years of something being around, I'd think most of the excessively complicated shit may have been figured out. Especially something as all encompassing as The Net. I mean, look at the cellphone. 27 years ago, it was barely able to make a phone call. Now, cell phones are more computer than phone. Hell, look at the progress in the medical field. They have cameras which can jack into the optic nerve and allow blind people to see. They have prosthetics that can actually move. In 40 years, this innovation is supposed to come out. I can believe that by then we would be able to fully simulate vision, hearing, movement, and even feeling virtually. And if not, 27 years later, with 27 years of research into improving said experience, would have done it. Especially consider these huge companies will want to improve their revenue as much as possible.

They had bars in Russia during that time because there WASN'T another option for bars. What I'm arguing is that if there is something you can do in two places, people will choose the better place to do it. IE: You don't go to a shitty club with women/men you don't find attractive. You go to the one with the hotties.

I never said people weren't going to go outside. What I said was, if there was another choice that is better than that, people will choose it. Maybe you can't exercise online. I'll grant you that. But in a virtual world, you could spend time at someone else's house without leaving your own. From the description, it would seem that things online are at least as real seeming as reality. I mean, hell... look at modern videogames. They're already on a level nearly as detailed as reality. I think that in The Net, it wouldn't be like merely watching something. For all intents and purposes, you WOULD be there. It wouldn't be like watching a video, because it's not something you look at on a screen. It would be all around you, as real as looking across the room at your girlfriend.

And yeah. I'm sure physical contact will still be a thing. You're going to have your lovers and your socialites. I'm saying most interaction would happen online, since this thing is so pervasive. But reality isn't going to be like our modern world, with choices of bars and things.

I imagine many of the entertainment options that are pervasive in our modern world would be much more rare in this dystopian future. People would likely play sports not for money, but for the fun of it. You wouldn't have bars on every corner like in some cities. I'm assuming most metropolitan areas wouldn't have more than a handful left open.

I'm not saying that you have to write any way. Myself, I was planning to play an evangelist dead-set on tearing down this virtual world. I'm trying to press the importance of the difference between The Net and The Waking World. It's not going to be a pleasant place in reality. As such, it's likely to be a pretty lonely place for the small groups of people who still prefer offline interactions. It's probably going to be nothing like even our modern life. You're not going to go to a bar or club and see dozens of people there, the most likely scenario is that even a single bar in a city won't have more than a handful or two. And the prices of things out there will probably be through the roof as compared to online services.

I mean, you're totally putting aside that these three near-Monopolies are basically running the lives of people. Why would they allow even a minor threat to their stranglehold on people's wallets?

[Jonathan Meer]

This topic is exactly the sort of thing I was hoping would come up.

I'm interested in the freedom of the Net, combined with the not-quite-realness of it. For all the prowess of the modern video game, there are still frequent issues of latency in multiplayer (where experiences do not quite sync up) and graphical oddities. Considering how complex and data-intensive a complete virtual world would be, I see no reason to suppose that these issues would completely disappear. For very high quality games, it's easy to suspend your disbelief, but I suspect there would still be an 'uncanny valley' in virtual reality: that is, the closer you get to fully realistic representation without matching it exactly, the more eerie and off-putting it is for the participant. For this reason, I can imagine a virtual orgasm of 99.7% fidelity being almost terrifying.

In other words, I imagine the Net as a place where people can live almost their entire life without concern, but I also imagine the Net as a place that many will view with some suspicion.

I also imagine there will be a significant, older population (where, in light of medical advances, human life expectancy might reach an average of 110) that will be extremely skeptical and uncomfortable with the Net, some of whom may not even have the neural implant at all.

I envisioned the Net as akin to the internet; a series of loosely-connected hubs of varying quality. Anyone can make a virtual space in the Net (just as anyone can make a shitty Wordpress website), but the vast majority are going to be uninteresting, largely vacant, and unmaintained. Many cities, on the other hand, will have a virtual replication of their city as a public offering, at much higher quality (and much stricter regulation and observation).

All of this to say: There will be gaming in the Net, and it will be high fidelity, and it will involve direct feedback (to potentially include pain and suffering), but the feedback, though more sensational than Waking World experiences, would still have a flavor of the uncanny.

(Feel free to disagree with any/all of this post)

[Sigfried Hunin]

it does seem like it would be possible to jack into the net and get some kind of physical feedback, but maybe it's not a great idea to do that. Maybe such a insanely dramatic brain surgery isn't possible to perform. Perhaps there is a way to do it, but it irreversibly locks you into the Net or something. Maybe you can do it but there's a huge chance of it failing and killing you, or making it so you lose your senses completely. Perhaps the government simply outright outlaws the implant or the writing of scripts that would cater to that.

There is a seas of possibility to write around the population's deadlock to the Net.

And I still disagree that everyone would forsake the outside world if there was no sensational input from the Net.

EDIT: And I think the interesting possibility of people who ARE locked into the net because they DID get a crazy-ass dramatic surgery or are breaking some kind of uber-extreme law. I think the exclusivity of sensation on the net would make it a more interesting concept.

[Jonathan Meer]

I very much like the idea of this new technology being thoroughly dangerous.

We're willing to put up with tens of thousands of car-related deaths every year for the convenience of automobiles. How much more would a society be willing to stomach for the sake of a virtual world?

[Blue]

Like Meer said, I can see why people would go offline for somethings, and that there may be portions of the population who stay completely offline. I just see a huge difference between reality and The Net. Like, in The Net, colors are brighter, smells better, sounds more crisp, but something in people would obviously feel alienated in such a perfect place. On the other hand, I can see this sort of lifestyle getting addicting very quickly. It'd be like being high all the time. A place where everyone is attractive, though probably not charming. Where even the sex feels better because the pleasure is being sent straight into your brain. It'd be both unnerving and addictive. I assume like a lot of psychedelic drugs.


I can see how some people, like today, would forsake the Net for the reason that it is better than reality. And I can see how many people would spend nearly all their time in the Net. And I like how polarizing the two worlds are to each other. That people want to spend time in this perfected world, but need to spend time in a lackluster reality too. I can imagine people walking down the real-world streets, pulled in on themselves and looking around as if reality was less real than what they experience online.

[Sigfried Hunin]

Right, which is why it's an interesting idea to make it dangerous or otherwise exclusive. If everybody was constantly jacked into a perfect, physically and mentally stimulating world, you're right, they would never leave it. However, if you take the sensation out of it, it suddenly becomes dry and, at times, unbearable.

This is why I brought up the ideas of it being dangerous, illegal or impossible.

[Blue]

I don't see it being illegal or impossible, considering how much money it generates. But dangerous? Sure. Just like drugs, there will be physical and mental dangers to it. As the thread in The Net hints at. I just see a lot of people not particularly caring. Which is why I think people in reality will be rather morose or angry. Either they want to jack back in to escape a shitty reality, or they hate that so much of the joy in life is tied into this fake world.

[Sigfried Hunin]

No, like the surgery that allows you to have sensations in the Net quite often kills people, either during the actual surgery or while in use. Having large parts of your brain filled with chunks of metal will never be a great idea, and the more expansive the worse off it'll be.

Internal hemorrhaging, strokes, seizures, all that noise. A large amount of side-effects, like not being able to sense ANYTHING outside of the Net. Something that makes it truly dangerous, and thus only the truly devoted will do it. These large amounts of side effects and dangers would also make it illegal.

Also, I think you and I share vastly different ideas of just HOW dystopian this future is. I don't think it's a mind-numbing horror-story to live in the real world. 27 years really isn't that long when you consider that there are going to be people who aren't even 40 who grew up without it. There's going to be LARGE blocks of culture dedicated to stuff other than the Net.

[Blue]

If we consider there's so much culture outside the purveiw of The Net, then the whole The Net aspect of this RPG becomes null. We have to assume The Net comprises a large portion of this day's society, time, and money. Think about how pervasive our current internet is. You can hardly have a job without a knowledge of how the internet works and how computers operate. I would think that in this future, The Net would have an even bigger stranglehold of our lives, since most jobs are done on it and it's such a shiny, magical place to be.

It's not that it's horrific to be offline. It's just... lackluster in comparison. Much like how drug-users feel when they aren't on drugs. It's not that reality sucks. It's just such a huge difference to them that it feels that way. Which is why The Net makes such a good... well, antagonist for people wishing to be offline. If it sucked, there'd be no reason to play this any more than to play an RPG about modern-day life.

I can see how certain things would still be very dangerous to install, such as implants which actually go into your neural tissue. However, most brain activity actually occurs on the surface of the brain. I would think that the wealthier of people could have the most advanced implants without risk, as they'd have access to the best technology and best doctors. The majority of people would either have to do with the safer tried-and-true technology, or risk some lower-tier doctor with last-generation equipment. But, I still doubt it would be made illegal. I'm almost certain these monopolies controlling The Net would have incredible pull with the Government. Rather than being made illegal, they would probably instead put warnings out to people, like those on cigarettes.

[Sigfried Hunin]

Also, if we restrict ourselves so firmly to the Net for where most of life happens, we're gonna miss out on a ton of other kickass stuff like cyborgs and androids and other sweet future shit.

Another way to approach the question of how we get people off the net is making the world around them interesting enough that they don't really need to be on it for cool shit to happen.

[Blue]

I'm not sure if cyborgs or androids are in this RPG. Like you said, if life offline is interesting, then what is the point of it even having its own forum? If it was meant to be only a small part of this game, it wouldn't need one. We have to assume that The Net comprises a large portion of the day to day life of people, beyond just work. Otherwise, what's the point? We might as well play Shadowrun.

[Blue]

Now, if your character wants to draw people away from The Net in such a way, I totally support your story. Hell, my character is wanting the same thing. But, we have to assume that The Net has such a stranglehold on people that such a dream would be hard-fought and nigh impossible short of espionage and terrorism.

[Sigfried Hunin]

Again, I don't know why you keep on insisting that if there is something interesting outside of the net to do that the Net is somehow "null." I go and fight people with swords, dressed up in a fantasy outfit and then I go the fuck home and write for chubs. Well, actually, argue with people on chubbs.

And again, the internet DOESN'T suck. The amazing possibilities of the Net are awesome and make an awesome place to write in and about, but if it literally consumes all aspects of life it quickly becomes kind of a crappy setting to write in. There needs to be a balance in order for there to be a dichotomy. I'm definitely not saying that people don't spend the majority of their time online, I'm not saying that at all. What I'm saying is that there are parts of life that cannot be fulfilled by being on the Net.

And you're right, a lot of information goes on on the surface of the brain - the stuff that we measure. But you can't INPUT things from outside of the brain. You have to get in there and do a direct stimulation, or you're just not going to get the right effect. Nowhere near "real" levels of sensation.

The point of making it dangerous or illegal is, again, to make the wonderful world of actual physical stimulation exclusive to those who are very addicted/devoted to it. And, ok, sure, it might not be illegal, but a lot of people don't want to do it because of the massive risks that are involved in it. And when I say massive, I mean like, 30% mortality rate dangerous.

That's what makes the little announcement that Akiratech so morbid: they'll give you a 7% discount if their implant gave your brain damage.

If you don't think that any of these things are realistic solutions to the problem, what kind of solution would like to see to help create a world where the Net isn't so appealing that people don't ever leave it?

[Blue]

I can agree with a 30% mortality rate. And sure, people will be turned off by it, the same as people are turned off by drugs and tobacco because they have high mortality rates. But I can see the addictive nature of this immersive Net as a deterent to many people to not do these procedures. Hell, we do things now that have nearly as high a mortality rate, though the difference is that most of the things we do now kill you over time.

I should clarify that what I mean is that the interesting things in reality should be overshadowed by The Net. Maybe there's cyborgs and androids in reality, especially androids to care for those truly devoted individuals. But in comparison, it should be something that most people would take for granted, or as a bare side-amusement when put beside The Net.

The reason I play up the Net so much is that it should be a big thing. I see most of the conflict for this game being between reality and The Net. And to keep that conflict, there would need to be a lot of power and support behind The Net adherents. Especially with the mortality rate you'd like to see. I'd like to see a Net where people only leave when they have to, because it makes what we do as characters more unique. Like we're a cut above the normal dregs because we choose to divide our lives more appropriately.

And it would make any ground me or you make to pull people from it more satisfying as well. Would you rather play a professional sports player who already has millions of fans who watch him from the bleachers, or one who has to prove that his prowess is better than what people can see/do online? The point of making The Net such a big thing is that it provides a foil for those who want to write offline as well as giving those who want to write about the online perspective a truly wonderous place to write about.

[Blue]

I felt like that was the best conflict in The Matrix, myself. Not the War against the Machines. But the battle to pull mankind from a false reality back into the real world. The battle against human nature to choose the easiest, most comfortable, nicest virtuality over the base, even lack-luster reality that has to be dealt with in order to retain our humanity.