I agree there is a mental pandemic to be. Imagine 20 years out when ultraporn, AI, and VR helmets are a suitable replacement to having a relationship with real humans. I'm all for tech, but I think that tech that splits us up and disconnects us really does make us a little less human. There's another side to it that lonely people could technically be happier in such a configuration, so maybe my argument is nullified by realizing it's just a tool and it's people that are at fault. I think I just did a 180 in a single post.
I am very familiar with this thought process... "being totally hooked in is evil and detrimental because movies show me they are!" -- but then you think about it... what if your life IS just better in the virtual reality? How is that a bad thing?
You are here to have an experience, logging on and having that experience elsewhere is fine if it isn't destroying lives around you.
Then you think 40 or 50 years out with undetectable differences between virtual reality and real-reality and you wonder if at some point we did get lost in a virtual world we created for ourselves a la Matrix... how would we know?
You could also imagine a world within a world once the virtual world is so real it isn't as fun.
