I don’t agree with Elon Musk that there’ll be less physical movement in the future because of Virtual Reality, not if we’re measuring step for step and gesture for gesture. We will likely see fewer miles traveled, however. Business trips, for instance, will be radically changed by VR. Perhaps, as J.G. Ballard predicted nearly four decades ago, everyone is staying home.

From Kia Makarechi at Vanity Fair:

“It’s quite transformative,” Musk said. “You really feel like you’re there, and then when you come out of it, it feels like reality isn’t real.”

“I think we’ll see less physical movement in the future, as a result of the virtual-reality stuff,” Musk said.

As video games get more lifelike and incorporate technologies such as haptic suits, Musk noted, “it becomes, beyond a certain resolution, indistinguishable from reality.”

The entrepreneur and futurist then offered a twist: “There are likely to be millions, maybe billions of such simulations. So, then, what are the odds that we’re actually in base reality? Isn’t it one in billions?”•