Word: virtuality
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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What about sex, though, meaning the experience, not the category? Chances are, we will be having sex with machines, mostly computers. Even today you can buy interactive CD-ROMs like Virtual Valerie, and there's talk of full-body, virtual-reality sex in which the pleasure seeker wears a specially fitted suit--very specially fitted--allowing for tactile as well as audiovisual sensation. If that sounds farfetched, consider the fact that cyber-innovation is currently in the hands of social skills-challenged geeks who couldn't hope to get a date without flashing their Internet stock options...
...this is only the beginning. Just ask Jaron Lanier, who coined the term virtual reality. Lanier is chief scientist for the "tele-immersion" project, part of the federally subsidized research program known as Internet2, which explores the upshot of massive bandwidth and computing power...
...standard virtual-reality experience, you may recall, involves donning a head-mounted display or special glasses--or, in principle, contact lenses--and thus entering a computer-generated fantasy world. As you turn your head or walk around, the computer adjusts your perspective accordingly. Tele-immersion is to videoconferencing as virtual reality is to Pac-Man. If it works, it will give you the visual experience of being in the same room with a person who is actually in another city...
...principle simple. If you've got a squash-court-size space to run around in, you can play with your college buddy, wherever he or she may be. (And no more annoying collisions with opponent, walls or ball, since all three will be illusions.) In fact, using standard virtual-reality technology, people have already played tennis remotely, Lanier says. But each looked to the other like a cartoon character--an "avatar." Tele-immersion will let you see the agony of defeat on the face of your vanquished foe. A big advance...
...purging all over the place is our reliance on media. Today we have 484,567,543 channels of great programming, which correspond exactly to the population of the U.S. It's really fabulous. Each of us has his or her own mix that completely serves our interests and virtual habits. I say virtual habits because none of us have any real habits to speak of, good or bad. They were outlawed in 2025, and most of us agree that we're happier without...