Futurama - A very existential job offer

I have a job offer for you. Basic knowledge processing work, unlimited salary, unlimited travel benefits, any hours you want and amazing working conditions.

Interested? The only catch is that you will be placed in suspended animation by your employer on a feed of liquid nutrients and your job will exist entirely in a virtual reality world. A bad day or even the non leisure parts of your life can be wiped from you memory. It will be indistinguishable from real life. Any lifestyle that can be computer generated can be yours. You will be able to interact with other people in the system or with computer generated promiscuous blondes.

Science fiction or reality? Well still science fiction at the moment but in forty years it may be very possible. I predict that by 2050 some people will be living significant parts of their lives in these conditions. It could bring a better quality of life for billions of people.

So could we be happy in these conditions? We have no idea what human life would be like in a world of surplus. Indeed I don’t think that the years of plenty in early 21^st century western world made people any happier. Scientists say that it is relative wealth that makes us happy so could we choose to be a millionaire in a world of virtual beggars? It doesn’t sound very appealing to me. Perhaps the virtual world could chuck some challenges in to keep us on our toes? Or would we subconsciously generate challenges for ourselves? As a Buddhist I believe that suffering forms a gateway to enlightenment,

One of the benefits would be the reduced strains on our bodies. Computers would monitor every aspect of our health and nano-bots could keep us healthy. This would mean that the aging process could be slowed down remarkably.

This possibility of suspended animation does begin to make long distance space travel look possible. Someone can put the Sat Nav on and go to sleep for 8 years while they travel to Sirius. The high speeds and suspended animation would mean that virtually no physical aging occurs at all.

The possibilities, questions and things that could go wrong are endless.