Evolution

We’ve evolved now to a net of human communication and interconnection, no longer just face to face, but tied together globally, so that each of the Earth’s 6.7 billion people (at least those with internet access… an ever increasing proportion of the whole) has equal possibility of knowing and interacting with any other.Olaf Stapledon, in “Last and First Men“, 1930, and then in “Starmaker“, 1937, predicted as much. William Gibson, in “Neuromancer“, 1984, and then Neil Stephenson, in “Snow Crash“, 1992, charted the specifics… they had the benefit of seeing the internet “just born”. Philip Rosedale, in 2003, launched Second Life, not the first virtual interactive world, but the first one in the image of the true nature and range of human interaction.

Far from being “escapist”, virtual reality space is a marker on the path of human evolution.