"You'll be here for the White Clown tonight, and the ladies coming over?" cried Mildred.
Montag stopped at the door, with his back turned. "Millie?"
A silence "What?"
"Millie? Does the White Clown love you?"
No answer.
"Millie, does--" He licked his lips. "Does your 'family' love you, love you very much, love you with all their heart and soul, Millie?"
He felt her blinking slowly at the back of his neck.
"Why'd you ask a silly question like that?"
He felt he wanted to cry, but nothing would happen to his eyes or his mouth.1
As Anastasia said, ten years ago many people wouldn't have been able to predict what the world is today2. The future is the stuff of science fiction, as time will continue to prove. Ray Bradbury had not only an uncanny sense of fantasy that would inspire future, but an uncanny sense of the progression of society. In Fahrenheit 451 he portrayed "wall-to-walls" -television screens in place of walls- that provided interactive 'family' to households, and a mind numbing, consuming escape of reality. As Castronova preaches, people are motivated by wants and "fun"3.
Televisions and home entertainment centers continue to increase in size. People will grow more comfortable surrounded by fabrication, especially as it grows in its capacity for interaction. They will read less, exercise more through media interaction (thank you Nintendo), and natural selection will evolve sociologically and adapt to using our own technologies to aid it.
I don't doubt that office jobs will still be office jobs, McDonalds and Wal Marts will still be populated with part time employees. People will have to work to support their anti-reality habits; although software licensing and government regulations will probably have to adjust to allow for virtual sales and profits. My job, ideally, will be to program graphics and physics engines that will advance how real interactive media feels; or perhaps to devise against hacking that might collapse virtual and real economies.
Media synchronization will improve to provide reality relief away from home. Home entertainment will undoubtedly grow to take up entire walls, perhaps not as soon as in the next 10 years but soon. Considering I can remember a time when there were a limited number of iMax theaters in the world, I'm quite sure that iMax will replace normal theaters -my preference being the dome theaters.
1: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
2: Anastasia Salter
3: Exodus to the Virtual World by Edward Castronova
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