26th July 2008, 11:39 PM
Yeah as fantasy it's great, but anyone who gets the weird idea that there's anything resembling a "world" "in" the computer somehow is running on some high grade stupid. It would be like having someone go "in" the "world" of a gear operated clock, and I mean exactly like that with no differences in terms of how silly the concept is. Electricity makes it magic though. There isn't going to be a world unless you program one in, and even there the idea that hacking via that world would accomplish anything on the level that it did in the Matrix is silly (yeah that's a pretty odd world too, as though "seeing the code" as the same as the actual virtual objects in the world makes any sense, but at least they don't suggest that a light bike game is actually being played by some mini-people).
All that said, as a fantasy idea it's fine, like Digimon.
All that said, as a fantasy idea it's fine, like Digimon.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)