Shedding Our Skin to Save the Environment
Eldon Kao
Picture taken by me in Toronto, Canada. July 2015
The way we interact with technology is ever evolving. With products like Oculus Rift, Google Glass, and MS HoloLens, we are seeing the first steps beyond just interaction, but a gateway into integration. The human race should expect to one day be bionic. With the ability to augment reality, store and access all information, how we see the world will soon change forever. But sight is just the most obvious and common way we interpret the world. There are other senses yet to be hacked and augmented to this degree. To feel virtually, we have haptic technology. To smell virtually, we have digital scent technology. To taste virtually, we have gustatory technology.
The method of current technology is to approximate real life by reproducing inputs and fooling our bodies into perceiving objects that aren’t there. Future technology will surely bypass our bodies altogether and provide direct inputs straight into our brains. With this level of technology, we could shed our skin and in all practicality live most if not all of our lives in the virtual world. Although there are many hurdles to jump before this becomes reality, it is interesting to imagine this future state.
Many of the problems we face today have to do with human kind’s insatiable need to indulge on temptations of the flesh. It’s the 7 cardinal sins that turn us against our neighbors and drives us to neglect the environment. If it was possible to recreate with 100% fidelity the feelings of lust, gluttony, greed, discouragement, wrath, envy, and pride in the virtual world, then surely we could loosen our demands on the physical one. The world would be a much different place if we didn`t require food (at least as we know it today). We could feed the world on a universal blend of nutrients, but using technology, feast on a diverse bounty of tastes and flavors. Concerns about GMOs, overfishing, ocean trawling, and animal factory farming practices would be a thing of the past. If it was possible to materialize and use any object in the virtual world with the same level as satisfaction as the physical one, then we could feed all the world`s egos with nothing but 0`s and 1`s. There would be no concerns about deforestation, minimum wage, sweat shop labor, floating garbage patches, or e-waste salvage yards.
The environment is depending on us to leave this earth. But maybe we don`t need to scour the universe for another planet to inhabit, we just need to digitalize ours.
Of course, to me this line of thought just triggers more moral and philosophic questions but I`ll leave that for another time.