Meet My Avatar

I make no secret of hinging on perpetual geekdom, and anybody who has spoken to me recently knows that I caught the Battlestar Galactica (re-imagined) bug last winter, watched the whole series in a matter of weeks, cried through the series finale in March and bought the prequel, Caprica, the day it came out. And yes, as the closing credits of Caprica rolled I sat at the edge of my seat, my mouth agape, yelling "What? That's the end? That can't be the end!" Geek enough for you? Alas, this has nothing to do with me.
A basic element of the plot of Caprica is that a girl who is a "computer genius" dies. In his mourning, her father discovers that his daughter had created a virtual copy of herself - an avatar, and had somehow programmed that avatar to see and feel what her creator saw and felt out in the real world, in real time. Another element, without giving a spoiler, is that a common trend with teenagers was to live vicariously through their avatars by going to virtual reality nightclubs full of anything hedonistic and entirely depraved. The story in itself leads to the creation of the Cylon, an endeavor that the seasoned geek knows will result in two wars and the end of the world.
This is science fiction at its finest. Or is it? The biggest complaint I hear about science fiction as a genre is that it is just too unbelievable - for for the most part, I would agree. But Battlestar Galactica is slightly different, and Caprica even more so. Ultimately, the reason the Battlestar can survive attacks by highly superior robots through five seasons is quite simply that the commander has not allowed for the ship's computers to operate on a network, because computer networks are too vulnerable to breach. This is not a science-fictional phenomenon - our own computer networks are the reason computer viruses spread as quickly as they can. But this isn't a big stretch to find anywhere in the real world.
The same is true for Caprica's techno-savvy teenagers living vicariously through their avatars. I find it both interesting and slightly terrifying that the video game consoles my generation grew up with have evolved the way they have. Our video game consoles now alllow us to create a cartoon avatar that may or may not look like us. It may not be a mirror image, but we can be represented in the virtual world by a character we essentially create. And gone are the days where our video game opponents sit next to us in the room - we can now interact with people from just about anywhere over a video game. We even communicate through headsets and speakers - just a small jump from the visors used to interface by the Caprica teens. These headsets are commonly used to volley obscenities at opponents, though it most certainly could not have been their intended use.
Further similarities lie in the actual creation of the Cylon - a top-secret project and military contract on the line, coinciding with the dark side of the justice system and the influence of gangsters. I make no allegations by this against the way things actually fall in terms of our political and military systems, but in the media-driven fear that has consumed so many of us since 9/11, there are many rumours and conspiracy theories not entirely dismissable, and not entirely different from Caprica's reality.
The cherry on top in all this is an article I read this morning in the Toronto Star that cites virtual reality sex toys that allow people in front of screens, regardless of where they are, to see, feel, and in essence do things to each other in real time. This is a pretty far jump from the all-talk cyber-sex in chat rooms everywhere when I was growing up. The toys are now letting us, in a way, to reach out and touch someone. So tell me, where do we go from here? How fictional is science fiction? I don't want to be taken as a doomsday prophet, but we're slowly reaching a point where the possibilities will be limitless. Perhaps the time is coming to step back, appreciate the distance we've travelled, and make some conscious decisions and conclusions regarding where our actions can lead us. I'm not saying not to move forward, but rather to do so carefully.