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PARTISAN REVIEW
systems, and are making medical diagnoses. I could go on with many
examples.
If
all the computers in the world stopped functioning today,
civilization would grind to a halt. You might say, "Well, of course that's
true." But that wasn't true as recently as thirty years ago, so in the last
thirty years we've made that fateful leap to becoming very dependent on
our computer technology, and it's already very interwoven with human
decision-making.
As we go through the next several decades, we're going to become
increasingly intimate with our machines. For instance, in
2009,
we
won't be carrying around these notebooks, or even these palmtops;
computers will be invisible. I recently had occasion to use the new dis–
plays that are literally built into eyeglasses; you can use prescription
lenses that could be built into your contacts and will display a virtual
screen in front of you that you could zoom in and out of. You can also
see through it, so you can experience the real world too. Interconnec–
tion to the Web will be continual and wireless and very high bandwidth.
By
2009,
the electronics will shrink, so that you won't see them; they'll
be in your glasses, they'll be in your clothing. Everyone will be walking
around connected to the Web at all times. This is a very non-invasive
scenario because it's not in our bodies and brains, but it has disappeared
into our environment and into our accessories and clothing.
As we go through the second decade, the resolution of those screens
won't just be like computer screens, they will be able to encompass our
full visual reality. Going to a Web site will mean entering a virtual reality
environment. Basically, we will be able either to replace or supplement our
visual experience; it'll be like those arcade games in virtual reality, except
that they'll be as realistic and compelling as
real
reality. For a meeting like
this, rather than having to congregate physically, we could enter a virtual
reality environment, and as you looked around, it would be just like being
there. We could have met in this actually quite lovely room, or we could
have met in a Mozambique game preserve, or on a beach in Cancun, or
whatever location might be appropriate for the meeting.
Along with full visual and auditory virtual reality, there will also be
ways of simulating tactile virtual reality. That'll be a little more cumber–
some, but by
20I9,
we'll have fully all-encompassing visual, auditory,
and tactile virtual reality so that you can have any kind of experience
with anyone, from business meetings to sensual encounters. That will be
the nature of the World Wide Web. Some virtual environments will be re–
creations of real world environments, some will be environments that
have no counterpart in the real world. Some perhaps will be impossible
in the real world because they violate the laws of physics, but that'll be
