Virtuality Universe/General Flavor

Virtuality Universe: General Flavor

The Virtuality Universe has people living in computers, and the computers can live almost anywhere. Inside the computers, people live more or less as we do now, except they take for granted some conveniences which we can only dream of.

Features

• Individuals can live as long as they want to, or can adhere strictly to the limits of their simulated bodies
• Individuals can choose to merge their consciousness with another's, either at "death" or when they feel the need for a major change
• True death only results if a person kept no backups, or all backups are destroyed, or (an interesting possibility) nobody considers them worth reviving (enterprising individuals will probably do restorations on spec for stiffs known to have the funds to pay for it; this could be an interesting story element)
• Annoying biological inconveniences (tooth decay, arthritis, weight gain, unintended pregnancy, PMS...) can be done away with, though there will probably be some compromises involved; some purists (think Virtual Amish) may insist on adhering strictly to the traditional human form, however, with all inconveniences included (possible stories there)...
• Travelling from computer to computer is still time-consuming, but the main constraint is not so much distance as bandwidth -- how much of your experience and personal memories do you want to bring with you on that business trip? Or on your vacation? How much are you going to bring back? If the trip is strictly business, maybe "you" don't actually need to come back; just send back a sort of sensory summary of what happened, destroy that copy, and reactivate your "home" copy with updated memories. Or maybe you didn't even "turn off" your "home" copy... (Some people will be nervous about "which one is really me?" and "how can I be sure I won't get trapped in the copy that gets turned off?", while others will fearlessly dart around, blithely making copies as necessary and deleting them when not needed; these will be the Type A people of Virtuality.)
• Everything in our virtual surroundings will be, in essence, intellectual property, since it can be copied almost effortlessly. This will be a significant issue, one way or another. I'll propose that back on square old Earth, there are rigorous copy-protection laws requiring Digital Rights Management software to be installed everywhere; out on the frontier there are no such laws, but instead a rigid code of ethics against using intellectual property without permission. (It could be a severe condemnation of someone's character, for instance, to note that they were using a pirated piece of furniture.) On the other hand, the frontier people are rather like Open Source people today -- more inclined to give away a design so everyone could benefit, in exchange for general gratitude and good-will. (I should go on much more about the culture of creativity in Virtuality, at some point.)
• Real-estate will no longer be an issue for organizing living space, at least not in the same way. Given a computer with a certain amount of "living space" (computing power, basically), each individual's portion of that can be rearranged as needed, connected arbitrarily, expanded or shrunk as needed. Sort of like if each person lived in their own TARDIS, with connecting doorways. This has a huge effect on how people live, as people will effectively be able to bring their houses with them -- leading to groups of people pooling their resources to buy better hardware and all live together in it, rather like a Hyperfamily.