If yours is a mind philosophically bent on pondering the future of humanity, especially the future that awaits us in the next 30 or so years, then you may have come across the thought in your own mind that we are becoming more "god like," as we progress. You may have thought that this is a useful idea to explore, and that it might give you some insight to what lies ahead. The definition of god that I typically like to use is that which is omnipotent. Humanity is becoming more powerful all the time. Whether it is our technology or the connections we are making with other human beings, (like this blog, right here and right now), humans are augmenting their range of capability in both social and physical aspects. However, I do not in general agree with the claim that humans are striving to become more god like, but rather I think we are striving to make the "gods" that will rule and care for us. I am speaking specifically about a world wide computer intelligence, capable of managing all of human affairs, taking care of the needs of every single individual human being on the planet.

My roommate and I debate often about virtual worlds, and how much they will come to dominate human life in the near future. He argues that people will eventually be spending all their time in virtual worlds, because virtual worlds already are capable of providing us with a valuable source of meaning that easily fulfills our psychological needs. Virtual world's will only continue to improve in what kind of enhancements they can offer their members. For instance in a virtual world you can fly from place to place, or teleport if desired. Because the fulfillment of pyschological needs is so easily obtained in a virtual world (for reasons not fully understood by us) people will be content to almost never leave the virtual world. Especially if virtual world membership reaches a critical point where it surpasses the numerical portion of the population who do not belong to any virtual worlds. He thinks once we are in the position that all our needs can be met interacting in virtual environments, which give us capabilities many times beyond what we can expect from real life, then we will never see the point in leaving. We will more or less be permantly plugged in, due to the lure of power it offers in combination with how easy it wll be.

But I do not think that this is really the fate of humanity for all time, to be so content with living in virtual worlds that we would never leave them. I do agree with him though that I think a large portion of the population will be spending a majority of their lives in virtual worlds in the near future (or you could claim a large portion already does), but I do not think humanity as a whole will be content with this. Although in the virtual world, one by fancy and whim will be infintely more powerful than he is in the real world, this is not a big enough lure to say suction away the efforts of astronomers from learning the nature of the real universe. Humanity has a desire to know its origins and the place in which it is living. I think this is even stronger than the desire for power. I could be infintely powerful for all time, but I must give up the ability to know more about the Universe? Maybe for some people, but not for me.

I am actually being a bit misleading, and I apologize. I think what is more likely to happen, is that humans will eventually start enhancing their own physical bodies so that they can keep up with the capabilties of their virtual selves. Not soon after that, the line between the virtual world and the real world will start to become blurry, as we merge our biology with machine interfaces that will carry allow us to carry our virtual worlds wherever we go in the real world. We will never quite be logged out, and never quite logged in either. I can see everyday human reality as becoming some sort of mixture, or linear combination if you will, of different virtual worlds and the real world all simultaneously overlapping onto one individual's consciousness.