I'm not really sure why. I guess there's something about planning ahead that makes you sort of lose interest in enjoying yourself now. But the issue with that is that once you get to "ahead", there's another "ahead" ahead of you that you need to plan for.
Thus making it impossible to enjoy yourself unless you seek instant gratification, at least once in a while.
(Yes, I know, I've already broken that vow.)
So anyway, I visited Sentosa for the first time in at least four years. Before this, I had never really seen the point of that place. Back then, Sentosa was this big tourist gimmick than was cleverly designed to suck your money out. By "cleverly", I mean "Ha ha you're stuck on an island and you need to eat. Here, have some overpriced fast food!"
...Yes.
Now, Sentosa is still a huge tourist scam. It falls under a similar categories for locals, too. Do you know how much it costs to just take that bloody monorail thing over? They've revamped the entire place. It looks a lot cleaner and more modern now. With that, it also became more theme-parkish and gimmicky. All we need now are big ferris wheels and a roller coaster that spans the entire island's circumference. Hey, that actually sounds pretty fun.
I suppose it is a good thing, after all. A nice place to immerse yourself in with the tourist trap gimmicky-ness. I mean, when people say they want a "refreshing, new experience" when they go for a holiday, they're lying. Or at least, I'd be lying. Thou shalt not underestimate the power of the familiar. So yes, I'd have to admit that I would probably enjoy myself at Sentosa, if I went there for that purpose.
Although, imagine if you could have a holiday anywhere you liked, five metres from your home? This, my friends, is called a holodeck. If any of you have seen the Star Trek films, or read their novels, this would be quite a familiar idea. Chances are, you didn't find out about this from Star Trek, but through some other piece of fiction.
The holodeck is basically a big room where very, very real simulations can be carried out. Anything that can be programmed into a computer, can appear in the holodeck as a real thing. You could change your environment completely, make it appear that you are in the middle of a swamp, fighting off flying crocodiles that shoot laserbeams out of their... Nipples. Somehow, all this information is sent to your brain wirelessly. Either that, or the holograms are actually solid and deadly. I forgot which.
This leaves us with a room which is probably what "awesome" would be if it were a tangible thing. You could essentially be anywhere you like, doing whatever you like, and involving other things that you like, without having to deal with this tacky little thing called reality. It's basically what everybody has dreamed of ever since the idea of simulated environments came about. Personally, I'd like to visit Middle Earth. Possibly have a fight with Shelob and get to wear a cool cloak. Also, the soundtrack would be playing in the background.
...Which essentially turns my entire immersive, realistic Lord of the Rings experience into a copy of a movie, directed by the same guy who did The Frighteners.
Yeah, I'll talk about how the imagination isn't quite as vast as people would like to think another day.
So then. Yes, that's the second "So then". And that's the third. So then, if everyone owned one of these holodecks, things would inevitably go wrong. First, everything that human civilisation has been built upon will cease to function. People will stop making the economy run. Organisations and cooperations will fall apart, as everyone visits their holodecks to copulate with their dream partners. The only things that people would want now are:
1) Better, more realistic holodecks, so that they can pretend to be superheroes
2) A way to stop having to leave the holodeck to pee, that doesn't involve giving your fantasy of being Iron Man a tangy aroma of dried piss.
And fecal matter, for that matter. Pun intended.
So all science would eventually boil down to... How to make The Matrix, for real. Because deep down, that's what every human wants. Eternal bliss. If you could achieve that through technology, and not have to worry about having pee breaks, everything Zen and deep about humanity would just cease to exist.
Oh, believe me. If you got the Pope to sit inside a holodeck for a day, he'd give his hat to someone else.
Ignorance is bliss. So I'm welcoming a future where we're all inside little fluid-filled pods being fed images of invisible pink unicorns and such.
-Joe