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 quite possible or even likely.)

Background Articles

• General flavor
• Technical details
• What People Will Need: explains a lot of the background reasoning

How people earn a living

Just as agriculture largely gave way to factory jobs and then factory jobs largely gave way to service jobs, most jobs in Virtuality will center around the processing of information.

Stating it that way, however, overlooks a significant change in the basic structure of day-to-day life which can be summarized thusly: People won't have to work so hard to survive. They will, however, have to work just as hard (or harder, depending on how you look at it) in order to keep up. "Keeping up" will not be a requirement for survival, but it will be essential for those wanting to be involved in the most interesting work. Keeping up with the pace of human development will be like riding a wave -- and getting behind can be seen as "wiping out", and having to look for the next wave in order not to get stuck in one place.

Some of the more interesting stories, however, may still be taking place in very concrete, 20th-century style work settings... like tending the solar power farms. Another setting where the pace of life will be forced to slow down to something we non-virtual humans can grasp would be deep space exploration, where individuals are largely cut off from "the grid". More about this later.

Timeline

to be written

• first "plug-in", i.e. more or less complete sensory connection to a computer
• first "upload"

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