From time to time, I like to offer up movie reviews. However, this is not one of those times. I merely wish to enter into a deep philosophical discussion that came about from watching the movie “Surrogates”. In case anyone out there is not familiar with the film here is a very brief plot synopsis. In the future several breakthroughs with robot and virtual-reality technology will allow all human beings to put their consciousness into a robot body and send their surrogates out into the world while their bodies stay safe and sound at home. Naturally, almost everyone chooses a robot body that is much more beautiful than their physical one (in one interesting example a fat, balding 40-something man uses a slender, attractive, blond 20-something woman as his surrogate). The indication, in the movie, is that no one ever leaves the “safety” of their own home anymore without using a robot body (except for the “radicals” who absolutely refuse to ever use a surrogate, but that’s a different subplot which doesn’t directly affect my point here).
So everyone is running around in their beautiful robot bodies. This got me to thinking about where our society is headed seeing as this sort of thing is already happening online. Ordinary looking people are using beautiful avatars when they interact with other people on sites like “Second-Life”. And you can bet that half of the hot, elven maidens in “World of Warcraft” are actually ugly men in the real world.
After pondering this idea for a little while, something vastly more alarming suddenly occurred to me. When I realized this it really shook me to the core of my being. In the future that this movie shows: THERE WOULD BE NO MORE RESTAURANTS. My gods, think about it. No one goes out without their robot-body – robots don’t eat – there would be no need for restaurants. Now, maybe it’s possible that these surrogates are sophisticated enough to have some human senses. Obviously they can see and hear and they appear to have a sense of touch. You would think that smell would be a good idea; someone needs to be able to detect gas leaks after all. So taste might not be a great stretch. But because the robot couldn’t eat food, it would have to be some sort of a chemical lubricant that is designed to taste like sous-vide beaver cheeks or else just a couple of lines of downloaded code so that the user-interface simulates the taste of prairie oysters.
On the other hand, though, fast-food chains that were strictly delivery would be doing huge volumes of business.