The undeniable narcotic disadvantages aside, the potential use of SecondLife projections to model the 'perfect' political system is perhaps the most frightening implication of. The number-crunching ability of computers to give as much scientific credence to political thought as it does to meteorology and cosmology.
If a consensus of projections were to repeatedly conclude that a benign military dictatorship of some kind was the only viable political regime. The only system which could be both sustainable and prosperous for the majority of the population, and which would enable a meaningful solution to global warming, and would end war, how many people would choose that option and abandon democracy?
The mere existence of such a proposition, supported by the right kind of promotion, would be enough to divide mankind as radically as the attacks of 9/11 or the erection of the Berlin Wall.
Even worse in some ways would be the repeated conclusion that an anti-democratic future was not merely desirable, but inevitable.
'Technology is the art of arranging the world so that we don't have to experience it'. says Heidegger. Which is particularly true of the escape world of Second Life. The problem is that it might also be a way of not re-arranging the world much any more, ever again.
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