1. What do you think is the underlying reason that we are drawn to this technology?

On the populist level: it's the purest form of escapism we can imagine. Instead of reading about someone's actions in a book or watching them on TV, we can slip inside them and see what they see, feel what they feel.

Professionally, it enables an expert to distribute their talent literally anywhere. Think of a surgeon conducting an emergency operation from her surgery in Adelaide on a patient in Madagascar, the Antarctic or the International Space Station. Or a geologist examining Martian rocks while they're still on Mars. Or, more prosaically, think of a policeman using VR to track a criminal while the crime is still being committed, without leaving the station.

2. Do you think it is about people avoiding the real world?

No more so than reading books, watching TV, playing computer games, role-playing, re-enacting famous moments in history, etc. It's just the best possible way of getting what everyone wants.

3. What are great things that you see being possible with this technology?

The entertainment stuff will be kinda neat, but that won't be the application that changes the world. (So we can crash a car off a cliff for fun and survive. So what? We'll always know, deep down, that it didn't really happen -- until the VR experience is indistinguishable from reality, and then the distinction becomes meaningless.) The way it frees us from our physical locations will radically change the way we work, especially when travel is required. Why leave my study to film a session for Aftershock if I can teleoperate a robot clone in my place? :-)

4. What do you think might be dangerous about this? Where could it all go wrong?

There are problems with the technology, as it exists. Migraines and nausea are just two symptoms of using headsets for too long. So we need a new way of doing it -- and that might involve surgical implants. (Ultimately VR will have to go that way if it wants to simulate *every* human experience.) Surgical always procedures always have a risk associated.

But risks associated with the principle of VR itself ... ? Doomsayers are probably saying the same sort of things today that people said about TV when it first appeared. Does TV cause us to lose our grip on reality? Has TV undermined our society? Has the value we place on human life and direct experience changed since every home had a TV set? Some people would answer "yes" to these questions, and they might be right. So maybe VR does pose the same threats.

The benefits of VR to society as a whole outweigh the risks to the individual, I think. All the people who pooh-pooh it would quite happily accept a life-saving operation from doctor 3000 km away, and you can't have it both ways.

5. Do you think people will become even more confused about who they are with it?

No. We’re already confused. Reality as we perceive it *right now* is a VR experience, filtered by our minds to a passive "conscious" us sitting in the background, watching the pretty pictures. It just takes the level of VR to another degree, doesn’t change it in principle.

6. Do you think it is could be dangerous psychologically as we will have many personalities and many probabilities?

No. See the above answer. We're already maladjusted. VR will create new ways to express it, but it won't be a fundamentally new source of trauma.

7. Who are some of the people you would be?

Hmm. None come to mind. I wouldn't mind looking like Johnny Depp for a while, though. :-)

8. What worlds would you explore?

Anywhere I could.

9. Would you have cyber-sex?

Sure. I might not have it twice, though, depending on the experience. :-)

10. Is cyber-sex real?

11. Is VR real?

See my earlier answer about what we call "reality". If I hypnotise someone and tell them a feather is a pin and they go "ouch" when I prick them, is their experience of the pin "real"? If we lose our keys and they turn up later right in front of us, have they actually not been there the whole time? We all live in our own fantasy worlds as it is. If you can't tell virtual reality from our everyday "reality" then there is no difference in their quality of "realness".

12. Do you think it will confuse people about who they are? About what reality is?

Did TV confuse people? For a good while yet, VR will be so clunky it'll be impossible to confuse it with reality. One day, when the tech is good enough, it might be possible to lose track. I'm sure we'll find ways to deal with that when it happens. Maybe we'll *want* to lose track ...

13. Do you think people particularly people who might not know who they are will become dangerously confused by this?

Yes. But some people become dangerously confused by watching A Current Affair, too. Someone with a mental illness, say, will be influenced by all sorts of things, and we can't control what they will be; we can only control the disease. Blaming any form of media for their actions only diverts energy away from the actual problem.

14. Do you think it might help people deal with the real world by introducing magic and fun into boring scenarios?

I don't know about helping people, but it sure will be interesting!

15. Do you think it’s just a natural part of our evolution?

Just another step along the three great civilising roads: (a) wearing clothes and makeup to conceal what we're actually like, (b) finding new ways to propagate information (print media, radio, TV and ... ?), and (c) using tools in increasingly interesting ways. It certainly seems to me to be a key step in social evolution.

16. What do you think the natural conclusion of this technology will be?

Complete dissociation from the flesh. Minds in bottles, or uploaded into computers, able to chose their "reality" at will. They could be anywhere they like, doing anything they wish. Completely free (and immortal, of course). Yay!

17. What do you think are the most exciting possibilities that will arrive when this technology really takes off?

Virtual overlays ("conSense" I'm calling it in a book I'm writing at the moment) to change the way we look to other people. Virtual teleconferences (or "VTC"s from another one) to enable us to communicate face to face with people anywhere in the world. Hands-on experience with things we would normally have no access to (like the inside of the Pyramids or the heart of a nuclear reactor). An entirely new medium for artists to explore. The possibilities are amazing!

18. Do you think life will be more fun with it – or will it lead us to lives of isolation?

Both.

19. Do you think we might all disappear into our own unreal worlds? Or we will be closer to people all over the world??

Both.

20. What do you think is the over riding motivation for humans in developing this technology?

Money. :-)

21. Any further thoughts from you?

The technology seems to have tripped a little in recent years. Certainly we're still a long way off from the cyberpunk dream of total immersion. But it's coming. We already have real estate agents giving people tours through homes that aren't built yet. There's a demand for this sort of experience that will fuel development. As with all the things on Aftershock, it's only a matter of time...