One of the neat fictional things that Gene Roddenberry dreamed up, the holodeck, might actually be coming to our living rooms soon, so that we can be completely drenched by even more entertainment, until it’s oozing from every last pore. Because we’re all children now who have to be amused every last fucking second. Everybody is excited about a holodeck potentially bringing us even more diversions. Well, not everybody. Starving children and colorectal cancer patients probably don’t care. But they have perspective, so they don’t count. From Nick Bilton in the New York Times:

“This is all part of a quest by computer companies, Hollywood and video game makers to move entertainment closer to reality — or at least a computer-generated version of reality. Rather than simply watch movies, the thinking goes, we could become part of the story. We could see people and things moving around our living rooms. The actors could talk to us. Gamers who today slouch on the couch could step inside their games. They could pick up a computer-simulated bat in computer-simulated Yankee Stadium while a computer-simulated crowd roared around them.

‘The holodeck is something we’ve been fixated on here for a number of years as a future target experience that would be truly immersive,’ said Phil Rogers, a corporate fellow at Advanced Micro Devices, the computer chip maker. ‘Ten years ago, it seemed like a dream. Now, it feels within reach.'”