Virtuality Universe

This is the background for a SF universe which could be a good setting for a lot of stories. It is closely related to the factual possibilities (eventually to be) discussed in the Cyberlife article.

Introduction

Some fairly small number of decades from now, as seems reasonably likely (or at least possible), people will be able to "upload" themselves into computers, and live there.

Life in virtual reality / cyberspace has been done before, but it's never very... practical, from my limited experience. It tends to be either punk, or superhero-ish, or else it's assumed that we'll all be at war against the machines, or we'll become soulless, or something else horrible. Stories set in cyberspace don't have just regular people.

In theory, once you're in a setting that is entirely software, you could live however you want; physical appearance would be (it's often assumed) irrelevant, as would all the physical trappings of how we live today, such as houses, streets, clothing, furniture, etc. which makes it really difficult to imagine how people will live (if indeed "people" means anything anymore), much less tell a story about it.

However, I propose (for this story-setting) that most people live in Cyberspace pretty much the way they do in "reality", with a few significant changes. (And I don't think this is just a crutch to make storytelling possible, either; it seems like a reasonable possibility.)

Background Articles

• General flavor
• Technical details

Background Reasoning

We will still need a lot of the things we have now:

• individuality -- different approaches help keep from getting stuck in a rut; if everyone thinks the same thoughts, it's difficult to be original. I would also argue that no single consciousness (that we know of -- maybe it's *possible*, but it's not something we would know how to do right away, at any rate) can keep track of all the details that are managed by the various people in any working group -- whether that's a family, a company, or whatever; tasks need attention focused on them, and if you're doing everything all at once, how can you focus?
• ways of interacting that are of the same quality as face-to-face interactions are now: When you talk to someone FtF, there's a lot more than just the words; there's intonation, facial expression, body language, and of course the physical context you're in ("Look at that over there! <points>") -- it's an interface which has evolved over thousands of years, and I doubt we'd be able to come up with anything better right away, so there's every reason to think that it will persist for awhile even when we have the option to try something different. So we'll probably have faces, and bodies, and houses, and nice places to sit and talk... except we'll have complete control over how all those things look and act (software bugs aside).
• ways of pacing ourselves -- it seems entirely likely, for example, that "sleep" is not just a physical function to rest the body; the mind becomes distracted and easily confused when deprived of sleep. This is probably a necessary by-product of the sort of intensive data-processing we do as beings with large brains; even corporate databases have functions they can only do at night, when nobody is using them (backup, repair errors, run analyses...) So even as software, we will probably need sleep, or something like it -- so why not continue to have night, and beds, and fluffy pillows?

Some things, though, will change:

In Reality, we need a few basic things: food, shelter, clothing, entertainment, and companionship seems like a good starting list.

In Virtuality, things are a bit different.

Obsolete needs

• Food as we know it now will not be strictly necessary. I imagine people will still eat in order to have the social experience of sharing a meal; also, depending on how rigorously we simulate metabolism within our simulated bodies, we may actually need the stuff to keep our simulated brains alive. However, virtual food itself will be for all practical purposes free; rich folks will probably pay extra to have food custom designed or custom-grown instead of being identical copies of a dish created earlier. Food templates will be copyrightable; this will be one of the many ways in which creative output and intellectual property will be even more of a major economic activity than they are now. (Imagine a food-oriented DeviantArt or Digital Blasphemy.)
• Clothing, much like food, can be replicated at will. Some people will pay a premium to have clothing custom-designed or custom-fitted to their simulated bodies, but this will be considerably easier as anyone will be able to send the designer an exact model of their shape -- no tedious fitting sessions. (Those wishing to save money while having the most choice from off-the-shelf clothing will alter their bodies into one of the more common prototypes.)
• Shelter takes on a different meaning. I imagine we will have simulated houses, but they will not be serving the function of providing shelter; people will still have a real need for shelter, and it will have more to do with things like anti-virus filters, spam filters, firewalls, and backup software.
• Current forms of entertainment will probably persist more or less unaltered into Virtuality; new forms of entertainment will be added, however, and some of the old forms may eventually fade into irrelevance... but entertainment in early Virtuality will seem largely unchanged from what it is in 2006. (There will probably be changes having to do with the present debate over intellectual property rights, which is shaping up to turn into a war of some kind at some point; perhaps a plot could begin with that idea.)
• Things will be very different in the area of companionship, but not *completely* different. I'm going to make some assumptions for the sake of world-building. (The reasoning gets a bit technical, so I'll put it here.) Near the beginning of Virtuality, people will be living at the same speed (or maybe slightly slower) than Reality people, so communications delays will be about the same as they are now:
  • people living in the same computer system will be effectively "in the same room"
  • people living in different computers connected by a LAN may notice some lag time for high-bandwidth communication (such as a shared surrounding)
  • people living in computers connected by the Internet will be reduced to lower-bandwidth senses such as 2-D vision, voice, or even text
  • people living on computers located at substantial distances from each other (in different parts of the solar system) will have to use email and other delay-buffered communication methods (some of which do not exist today).

New needs

Virtuality people may not need food and shelter as we know them today, but they will still need to "feed" their computer-homes with electricity, backup media, and replacement parts. More critically, they will also need to protect their systems from software attack (one particularly bad virus could "kill" an entire family, who would then have to be restored from backup -- much like rebuilding a household after a fire) and protect the physical computer from damage. This last will be especially important for Virtuality processor-homes located in space.

Most people and communities living in Virtuality will also need to maintain their communications links to the greater Earth and Solar System networks; I'm thinking that the tech for this will be cheap enough that most connections will be free (a sort of ad-hoc peer-to-peer network), but those living in especially remote locations (for whatever reason) will need to pay extra for access to high-powered receivers closer to civilization.

We will also need CPU cycles and other computing resources -- this will be the bread-and-butter of Virtuality. Someone who can afford twice the computing power can think twice as fast, or think about twice as many things. In a world where intellectual property is the larger part of people's productive output, processing time will be crucial to success. More computing resources also means you could have room for more people, or a nicer living-space/house (more simulation detail, or more rooms, or...).

How people earn a living

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