Here's a piece to print off for a discussion starter on a counsel retreat this year.
Even more dangerous and frightening than that literal tech world our children are virtually surrounded by today is the virtual tech world that they will be literally surrounded by tomorrow... and what it means for spirituality in general and the church in specific. Writer and futurist Phil Callaway, in Who Put My Life on Fast-Forward?: How to Slow Down & Start Living Again offers a stark prophesy about the future of the virtual experience once it changes from a flat screen to true 3D: “Second Life (a current cartoonish virtual world of online role play games) is a transition space. When GoogleEarth gets online, we can meet at the Eiffel Tower. All the screens will disappear. Everything will be holographic. The real question will be “are you real?”
Callaway’s comments should make every pastor, teacher, and caring protective parent—and everyone else who cares about the world of the future—think twice and hard and long. Here's my take. Feedback welcome:
One day—possibly in our lifetimes but certainly in our children’s lifetimes—we will all enter the holoworld. There is little question about that. The question is, as technology improves and perfects, how will our children know the real from the fake? The false from the true? It will start as an amusement. Some folks will play it and play in it only for entertainment—like a present day video game. Some will choose to work there eight hours a day, then come home and play there another eight hours. Some will put themselves on an IV nourishment drip and a urine bag to go on Virtual Vacations (VV) in Virtual Life. (VL). Some will spend weeks there. Some won’t return.
Then, one day in our children’s children’s lifetime, those who can afford it will live mostly in VL, work mostly in VL, love mostly in VL. (I am told they are already designing the penile sleeve for Virtual Valerie.) Men will likely be more addicted to it than women - probably at the current rate of 3-1 - as the porn industry will offer VR lovers with whom real women won't care to compete. Human relationships will be seen as too messy. Painful. Uncomfortable. VL will become so advanced that most people won’t know “real real” from “fake real”. The only way they’ll sense what is real real is when they remember that only the real pushes back.
Only the real real hurts. Only the real real doesn’t serve their every whim and fantasy. The fake real will fulfill their every wish. Virtual Val and Virtual Valerie will grant their every desire. Our species—or shall I say those of our species who can afford it—will get everything they want served up hot and spicy, 24-7. And we will expect to get everything we want, whenever we want it. How will we know the false from the real?
Only the non-objects (noun) will object (verb). Only the non-objects will tell us we can’t have everything we want. Only they will push. Only they will confront us . . . tell us we’re being stupid when we need to hear it. Refuse us our every desire. The strange thing about that day for our species will be this: the objects (noun) won’t object (verb). The subjects (as in real entities) will object (verb) when we treat them like objects.
Then, one day in our great grandchildren’s lives, artificial intelligence will figure out that in order to fool us, the fake real will have to learn to push back. Maybe with haptics on holodecks. The “holo” which now seems rather hallow, will be hollow no more. The holy and hallowed, now indistinguishable from the virtual, will be holy and hallowed no more. The fake real will learn to cause us pain in order to fool us into thinking of it as the real. The machine will finally learn to say, “No.” The machine will eventually learn to say, “I, too, have a soul.” Finally, the machine will say, “We are as gods!”
And if we do not know how to know the difference, we won’t know not to believe it and worship it. I am half-way through writing a poem called “Hollo.” Here’s the last few lines on that not-so-distant day:
And we will own a thousand lovers.
And we will die ten thousand deaths.
And we won’t know one from the other.
Until we experience the one who breaks our hearts and then, the only ONE who can heal them.
How will our children’s children know to distinguish the false from the true in the virtual world of tomorrow? They won’t, unless you teach your children now to know and love the real and the true in the real world today. How will they know what they are even missing or that there is even something to be missed? They won’t, unless you lead them now to seek out and know the true self, the true you, and the One True God. It is time to start. Tomorrow won’t wait.
It will be too late.
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