A glimpse of the future?

I went to see a movie last night. In RL. I know I don't blog RL here and make a point of not doing, but the film is kinda appropriate so I will break my own rules this one time.

The movie was Surrogates. If you've not heard about it, it is set in the near future. Basically robotics and stuff have developed to the stage where almost everyone use a robot in every part of their everyday life. People are linked to their robots via "the grid". They stay at home in pretty much isolation, on their "stim chairs", and go and live their lives via a robot they are connected to. Their Surrogate. They can be young and attractive forever. They can do things they would not normally do. They can be who they want to be.

Do you begin to see why I might have thought this movie made me want to blog?

The story of the film is not really important. It's a decent murder/intrigue sorta of a thing but the key thing for me was the basic premise. The idea of surrogates. It all felt quite real, and not really too far from the lives we currently lead. The second lives, I mean. For surrogates read avatars.

We can be who we want to be, and we can do whatever we want to do. We can leap from tall buildings. We can fly. We can be perky blonde bimbos instead of fat blokes in Iowa.

The only difference is that at the moment most of us only use our surrogates when we have spare time. And the grid is still inworld, rather than outworld too, if you see what I mean. But it's not too big a leap, I don't think. How many of us prefer our second lives to our other mundane one? How many of us would leap at the chance of a surrogate?

As the film ended, some punk-kid stood up in front of me, turned to his mate and said "well, that will never happen". I think most of you, like me, would disagree. The future is not far away.