6.6 Worlds without end

I wish this section could have been longer and that I could have written about:

• mirror worlds which are exact digital representations of parts of our own world – cities, hospitals, and so on – and which are constantly fed data that keeps them up to date;

• autonomous robots that move through the real world, sensing it, responding to it and changing it;

• artificial life: worlds like Tierra, teeming with digital organisms;

• telepresence in which it is possible to interact with a virtual representation of some real scene, perhaps from thousands of miles away. For example, using telepresence, a surgeon can operate on a patient without being at the scene.

But you may not share my wish, so I will just move to the final section, where I raise a few concluding questions.