The Matrix had it all wrong

Yes, humans are going to end up in life sustaining pods, fed nutrients through an automatic delivery system and with our nervous system connected to a huge computer network.

The reason, however, is that it’s the natural progression from what we’re already doing today. We want to be always online, always connected, get real time status updates from friends, logged on to our favourite social networks and games wherever we are. We want to work from home, to blend our professional and social lives, to augment our reality in any way possible.

We have no problems envisioning a future where we go to work in a virtual environment, have virtual meetings instead of flying everywhere, and live virtual lives (just for fun? really?). There’s no reason to believe we’re suddenly going to not want to live those virtual lives 24/7 - and that’s the same as accepting our pod-enclosed future.

When our simulations are good enough, there’s very little need for a life in the physical world. 90% of all South Koreans in their 20s have a virtual existence on Cyworld. The mainstream Internet is only 10 years old. Try to project what the youth of 2020 are doing with their lives. Can you? Do you even want to? Why not?