Message to this hologram we call our world: 3D is a form of reality too

RASHMEE ROSHAN LALL March 4, 2014

As the world busies itself inventing “the internet of everything”, it turns out that we might actually be nothing. That we don’t really exist. That we might be a hologram.

As this simple explainer puts it, two studies led by Ibaraki University physicist Yoshifumi Hyakutake are confirming something many of us already suspected – that we’re just a representation of reality and might actually be in ‘second life’ without ever having had a first life.

Those with a good memory – or an interest in such matters – might remember that Second Life was launched in 2003, as an online virtual world developed by Linden Lab. In 2007, Brazil became the first country to have its own independently run portal to Second Life and the Maldives, Sweden, Estonia, Colombia, Serbia, Macedonia, the Philippines, Albania and Israel have embassies there.

In Aeon, the online magazine, Matthew Francis reminds us that “in addition to philosophical and scientific ruminations, the idea that human consciousness is simulated is a staple of science fiction.” The movie trilogy beginning with The Matrix (1999), he says, categorizes the world as “a computer simulation to keep humans’ brains busy while their body chemistry was harvested for energy.”

Back to Second Life though, it was never really a traditional computer game and didn’t have a designated objective, rules or any real logic. Rather pointless really?

Perhaps, God forbid, like the hologram we call our world?