[Blahah]

The avatar idea has been a staple of sci-fi for a long time, at least since Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash (1992). Personally I don't find it creepy at all. Ever used SecondLife?

Nothing about the scenario in the article actually suggests a loss of free will - if anything it suggests a gain of super-free will in which people are more able to have their desires fulfilled by accentuating and enhancing what the real world can offer.

[pvnick]

>Nothing about the scenario in the article actually suggests a loss of free will - if anything it suggests a gain of super-free will in which people are more able to have their desires fulfilled by accentuating and enhancing what the real world can offer.

At the end of the article, it depicts the people taking off their Glass only to find the real world bland and uncomfortable, quickly returning to the relative comfort of the virtual reality they've grown dependent on. These people can no longer cope with life on life's terms. If that's not a loss of free will then I don't know what is.

[Blahah]

Yeah, and many people from modern society would struggle if plonked into the middle of the African savannah. People come to depend physically and mentally on the support structures of modern society, and that's OK. Life's terms change constantly, and are only meaningful in the contemporary context. In the story, augmented reality is life on life's terms.

[Cushman]

You evolved from species that lived well for millions of years without the use of sight. Shall we remove your eyes, so that you may experience freedom?

[mwcampbell]

"Life on life's terms" is not some divinely ordered happy state; it's just the way things happened to work out through chance and evolution. Why shouldn't we seek to improve the way we interact with each other and the world around us in any way we can? I do have misgivings about augmented reality powered by proprietary software and opaque services running somewhere far away, but I quite like the idea of augmented reality in general.

[falcolas]

> These people can no longer cope with life on life's terms. If that's not a loss of free will then I don't know what is.

That's probably what creeped me out about Wall-e's distopian future more than anything else. It's the embodiment of what was described in this article, without the happy ending...

[ippisl]

How is the end of the article different from wearing makeup and nice clothes and trying to live in nice neighborhoods?