Choicebetweenlivinginarealorsimulatedworldmaybejustaroundthecorner
ByROBERTIRELAND
inHongKong
[email protected]I
t’s late. Thewrought iron
gates of the cemeterystand
just ahead, butwhat’s on
your mind right nowis
the rain, falling in sheets,
and getting home as fast asyoucan.
Your car is back there, hungupina
ditchwhereyouskidded off the road,
braking to avoid thewashout. The
quickestwayhome — the shortcut
through the cemetery, then back to
the main road.
“Abandon hope allyewho enter
here” flashes throughyour mind.
Youstruggleup and over the cem-
eterygate, and trudge on, finding
yourwaythrough the low-lyingmist.
Wait, is something moving justup
there, among the headstones? That’s
nuts. Nobodywould be out this late,
in a storm.But that something is
moving andyoucan see clearly,alost
face, pale and ashen, a face of terror
and madness. Youfeelyourguts get
tight. This isunreal.Butwait.Don’t
be afraid. You’re in control. You’re
invirtual reality—where anything
can happen.
Letyour imagination soar. You
could be the hero ofyourown life’s
epic adventure.
“The onlylimitation iswhatwe
have bonded to our imaginations, so
dinosaurs,or outer space, or aliens,
anything that isunder our imagina-
tions could be realized, to certain
degrees ofvirtual reality,” said Henry
Y.K. Lau, associate dean, Innovation,
at Hong Kong University’sFacultyof
Engineering.
The future presents a prettycloudy
picture, a specter even — things like,
robots taking jobs, leaving millions
and millions outofwork; bitter,
alienated andwith nothing to do.
Youmight even think,we’re living in
an age of monsters: exotic diseases
able to spread around theworld,
mass extinction, andyikes! scien-
tists sayan asteroid couldwipe out
e verything— all reasons towant to
escape to a place that feels safe, like
virtual reality.
Sowe asked the experts:Could
we, someday, choose between life in
realityor invirtual reality?
“Sure. In mybook I layoutwhat
I call the Road to the Simulation
Point,which consists of stages of
technologyor gates thatwould have
to be crossed. (We have reached)
what Iwould call stage five(of1 0 ),
sowe’re halfwaythere,” said Rizwan
Virk, a computer scientist, engineer,
and executive director of PlayLabs,
at the Massachusetts Institu ofte
Technology.
His bookTheSimulationHypoth-
esis,published in March, is a cur-
rent best-seller onAmazon.com. Virk
predicts that inside a century,sci-encewill produce a simulation game
indistinguishable from reality.
“What’s the point?”youmayask.
Well, modelingEarth and starswill
mean astronomical advances in sci-
ence. On the other hand,wehavea
20 17 poll byPewResearch showing
that 72 percent of people areworried
about losing their jobs to a robot.
“Youhave a small subset of people
who have deep technical knowledge.
Theyare going to take outbusiness-
es, they’re going to take out jobs,”
said UdemeEkong, doctor ofA i-rt
ficial Intelligence andCEO and co-
founder of the content-driven social
networking siteBloverse.
“Thatwill create a dividewhere
youhavepeoplewho havenopur-
pose, nowayof making a living, and
theyare basicallygiven a stipend by
the government. So, I think in 5 0
yearswewill be in that statewhere
the average individual spends 8 0
percent of his time invirtual reality.”
It maybe hard bendingyour mind
around the changes happening all
aroundus right now— and this is
just the beginning.
“What it’s going to bring is mind-
blowing,” said Tomas Laurenzo,
assistantprofessor atCityUniversity
of Hong Kong. His research focuses
on “InteractionDesign + Human
Computer Interaction,Artificial
Intelligence, and Virtual Reality.”“Everything is about to change,”
Laurenzo said. “One of the things is
this redundancygap, (in large part)
because of the liberation of attention.
Things thatused to require not intel-
ligence but attention, like driving a
car, theywill not require that atten-
tion. Just liberating the attention is
going to change everything.”
Youalmost get the picture of the
Eloi — the innocents in the H.G.
Wells sci-fi novelTheTimeMachine
— idle, lazy, ignorant and helpless.
Can the idled innocents of the not
too distant future be spared liv ofes
idle stupidity?
Youmaynot knowthat the global
market for computer games is “big-
ger than the movies” already.Accord-
ing to data portal Statista, that mar-
ket is headed for a $131.23 billion pay
dayin 2 020 ,while the global cinema
market expects only$5 0 billion.
Newzoo, awebsite that tracks
global gaming trends, in its annual
GlobalGames Market Reports, cites
2.3 billion active gamers around
theworld in 2 0 18. Tencent’sHonor
of Kingswas the highest grossing
mobile game in 2 0 17, boasting 2 00
million monthlyactiveusers inChi-
na alone. That’s mind-boggling. The
global population byMay 2018 was
estimated at 7.6 billion.
Now,wehave so-called esports.
Viewersaround theworld are tun-
ing in towatch international com-
petitions in some of theworld’s most
popular games. This has become so
big that the International Olympic
Committee is considering trying
out “electronic sports” as an Olym-
pic event at the 2 022 Beijing Win-ter Olympics. The message:Don’t
underestimate the influence of com-
puter games.
According to Virk, “Oncewe’ve
moved from the current stage of
augmented reality,virtual reality,
the next stage is photorealistic fully
augmented realityand mixed reality,
so thatyoucan actuallycreate photo-
realistic objects.And ifyou canmake
them appear, evenwithout glasses
throughout the room, thenwegetto
the next stage.”
Virk added thatwhile technol-
ogyis alreadyprettygood at reduc-
ing anyenvironment to pixels on
a screen, “whatwe can’t doyet is
render those pixels in real time”. This
means that on avirtual tour, com-
puters aren’t fast enoughyet to load
graphics instantaneously. There is
lag time.
But the fact that the technol-
ogystill has quite awayto go has
not stopped progressing in mind-
blowing directions. Takeyourfavor-
ite social media platforms, Weibo,
WeChat,Facebook, Snapchat. Those
are the step toward socialvirtual
reality.In socialvirtual reality,peo-
ple, through their generated avatars,
will be able to come together, sharing
experiences invirtual reality.“Hey,
let’s meet at the Taj Mahal, and then
take in a showat theFolliesBergere,
in Paris!”
Companies likeAlt VR’sFrontrow
allowsubscribers to see their favorite
artists in live performances — even
interactingwith the performers.
That market in the USwasworth
$1 0 billion lastyear.
“Therewas recentlyaconcertin (thevideo game)Fortnitethat
had millions of people attending,”
observed Virk. “So itwas one of the
most attended concerts ever, and
theywere all attending it inside
thevideo game ...where their ava-
tars (their characters in the game)
attended.”
Ma ybeyou’veheard of Illusion
VR,adevice that comeswith a head-
set, and a bodysuit that claims to
provide a full-bodyvirtual interface.
What’s it for? Youguessed it —vir-
tual sex.
HKU’s Professor Laulooks toward
newcommunities,without borders,
interactionwith people all over the
world, even tactile communication.
“VR can beveryindividualistic. So I
would like to maybe make myavatar,
virtually,tohave a more profound
influence over awide audience.But
atthe same time it’s the communi-
ties, thevirtual communities, that
everybody,everyindividual real
human, mayhave freelyto interact
with either real orvirtual avatars.”
Howfar down the road are the
fantasticvisions? It’s hard to say.
Science grows and accelerates like
compound interest: a discoveryin
one area leads to a breakthrough in
another, and that speedsupdevelop-
ments inyet more areas.
The advance of science is not a
linear progression butadynamic
structure. The choice between living
in realityorvirtual realitymaycome
soonerthanwe think.Theauthorisasenioreditorial
consultantatChinaDailyHong
Kong.Imaginethat!Virtualreality
$131.2
billion
Estimatedvalueoftheglobalmarket
forcomputergamesin2020While virtual reality still has quite a way to go, it has not stopped progressing in mind-blowing directions.PROVIDEDTOCHINADAILY28 LIFE August 2-8, 2019 CHINA DAILY GLOBAL WEEKLY