For centuries people have found a way to deal with their inabilities to cope with real life through indulging in fantasy. Fantasies that have to do with confronting monsters and dragons, evil queens and ruthless kings. Fantasies that mix real life with the absurdly fantastical that there is no way in the world these stories could be real. Does it work? Can we escape the stress and anxiety of any given day by allowing ourselves to go off into these other worlds?
Now there’s the rub, isn’t it? Of course they work, for a while. For the short period of time, you are reading about these other worlds and characters you have been taken out of your life and transported to a new life, in a new place far away from your reality. But, like the old saying, all good things must come to an end, so too this session of escape ends and most of the time all too soon. What if there didn’t have to be an end? What if these worlds of fantasy could live in harmony with your world of reality? No separation of the two?
We are talking science fiction, right? There is no possible way for these two places to coexist in the real world. There is now! As fantastic as that may seem, it has a dark side. A frightening side that is now becoming a real thing. It’s called A.I. or Artificial Intelligence. Through this computer-generated product, your fantasy world and your real world do not have to live a part any longer. You can have your cake and eat it too has never been a truer statement than in the 21st Century.
It is all done by using microchips, brain waves, and visual aides that can be imbedded in a pair of ordinary reading glasses and ear pieces. Imagine, walking down any street in any town where you live and suddenly, not more than fifty feet in front of you, a medieval type dragon swoops down and soars above your head! You can even feel what can only be the wind from his wings as he glares down at you with his blood red eyes and suddenly disappears into the clouds.
Your heart is pounding in your chest, and as you look around, no one else seems to have seen your monster. Only you. Of course, if others are lucky enough to have their own A.I. they may be seeing something else entirely different. Something that you cannot see. Depending on who you are, and how your day is going, and how much of that sort of excitement you can take, a brief encounter with a dragon may be enough for now. In fact, you can turn the A.I. off anytime you want, and you will have a normal rest of the day. If that is what you’d like. Most people though who are exposed to A.I. will not want to turn it off. They will want it to become what is real. They will want the artificial to be the reality and they will keep A.I. on all of the time. They will want the monsters and the dragons to be around, and they will soon feel the need to fight, to be active and to interact with their fantasy world more than they will want to deal with the real world. They will develop an addiction to the freedom of escaping their lives, and will grave more. A.I. will someday become the designer drug of choice, and it will be legal.
Now, the kicker. The fine print of all of this. Someone will want to be paid for this fantasy world. It is not there at the whim of the user. It is a capital enterprise, and it will demand payment. So, there it is. The bottom line as they say. At this time the technology is possible. It is here. Maybe not to main stream America, but it soon will be. Just as easily as you can go into any Staple, Walmart, or Costco and buy electronics, you will be able to go into those same stores and buy whatever enhancement to make the potential for A.I. ready on your demand. If you think that will not be the case just think back when you were young and something called a Casio watch came out. It was not your father’s watch. This one was digital. The watch hands were gone. Replaced by numbers. Remember how much it cost? Hundreds of dollars. Not everyone had one, but it was the latest technology. By the time you were twenty years old, everyone had one, and they cost under twenty dollars. Now, you can go into any big box store and get one of the same watches for under ten dollars. You think the same thing won’t happen to A.I.? Think again. Someday, and soon, everyone, no matter their income level will have easy access to Artificial Intelligence. A.I. will make sure of it! The people’s addiction will have to be satisfied. For what it will be worth, welcome to the future of the downfall of mankind. It was fun while it lasted.
Does Everything Have to Have an End?
