Younger generations of people are already not even required to speak to each other anymore. My nephew told me that the longest conversation he ever had, was with his aunt… and it was for 5 minutes.

What I think is funny is that these ideas aren’t really new to me at all. I thought this exact same thing one time about 7 years ago after I ate a bunch of mushrooms. Then when I woke up the next day, I realized that if such a thing ever happened, It wouldn’t be anything I’d see in my lifetime anyway.

As you all sit there talking about being controlled and such and tracked through someone else’s specified “achievements,” take a look at how large corporations already aopperate… and have for hundreds of years.

Besides, most people would deal with it pretty well. It’d come slowly. The first cereal box with a game on the back would be wildly popular – then everyone would copy it, and before you know it… cereal box games are normal. And so on.

It’s not that it’s certainly going to happen. It’s just that it’s something that could very well happen – and it will if they can figure out how to do it.

Intel is already working on putting a chip in your brain by 2020. Maybe it’d be cheaper to have something that interacts with that.

As for the technology being far off, you’re right. I’m sure technology is already capable of doing these things, but the problem isn’t the technology. Do you honestly believe that we would even be able to acquire the resources to produce such a mass network of products which are interconnected and can communicate between any other object? No, sorry, we are no where close to coming to that scenario.

As for spyware/viruses and ubiquitous OSes, what do you believe would be running all these magical devices? A million different embedded software in a million different products? For any such society to exist there would have to be some major standardization amongst all the products in order for them to react to one another, and it would only be a matter of time before some industrious hackers (or comsci nerds) find security holes in it. Plus, you don’t believe Microsoft, Apple, Google, Sun or any other huge software company would fight to the bitter death to monopolize these things? We all know how infallible their software is *chuckle*.

The future he predicts is im-fucking-possible. If it were possible, we’d turn into delusional headcases who wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between what’s real or fake and when the majority of the world, who don’t have such a fucked up sci-fi society or delusional population, want to have what we got they’d steam roll us.

But I’m not cynical, I swear.

Spyware and viruses only effect PCs running ubiquitous OSes, not embedded software.

And how can you describe the ending as “awesomeness?” He’s describing an Orwellian society where everything you do is tracked through achievements, which also control everyone’s lives.

At the point that we even have the slightest capability of making the world like that, you can be sure the apocalypse is coming soon. We can barely keep a computer running consistently without getting spyware or a virus; we have computerized cars that either break down in a year or don’t have working breaks (thanks Toyota); more than half the world living in poverty and shit; climate change that is going to revamp our entire landscape whether or not we caused it; our ridiculous over-dependence on oil will soon deplete all reasonable sources; and here we are imagining our lives as one giant video game of awesomeness!

Pfft, year right haha. I’m waiting for the day that technology breaks and some poor clerk gets hurt because someone can’t buy a snickers bar.

Still, we find ourselves chomping at the bit to play Azaroth’s IPY 2.0. It’ll be interesting to see if future generations of players will appreciate the games of the past.

I agree with you about how frightening the subject is. The first half of the video is interesting and inspiring, but his view of the future sounds terrible. If my life became a WoW treadmill I’d have to kill myself.