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Holodecks

Feb 1999

Many of us have watched Star Trek enviously, wishing we could have holodecks today. During their leisure time, the Enterprise crew could describe their fantasy to the computer, which would then interactively create it for them with synthesised people and places that they could interact with. The computer would be able to fill in the detail and make intelligent guesses as to the sorts of people and objects to use as padding. So Picard may just suggest a mid 20th century New York detective's office and 'some kind of mystery to solve' and the computer would oblige, with an environment and activities and people that would be indistinguishable from reality.

Of course, Star Trek - The Next Generation is set in the middle of the 24th century. But the technology is mostly early 21st. The spacey technologies such as warp drive, teleport and occasional time travel may be far in the future and some may even be impossible or infeasible, but the holodeck is achievable in part at least within decades.

A small room may be completely lined with high-resolution 3d displays, or a user may wear active contact lenses for the visual input. We already have technology to produce a sound anywhere in 3d space. Just with these technologies we would be able to wander round and explore a synthesised environment. In just a couple of decades, the computer will be fast enough and smart enough to drive it reasonably convincingly too, so the environment would look and sound lifelike. This would already be a good compromise to the Star Trek science fiction. For leisure, entertainment, education and teletravel it would already be acceptable. But that's not it.

Perhaps by 2015 and certainly by 2020 on today's projections, we should be able to make inputs directly into the peripheral nervous system. This means that we can dispense with the cumbersome data gloves of today but have a more realistic sense of touch in the virtual environment. Probably smell and taste too. So while we may not have the metamatter of the Star Trek version, the experience may now be equivalent. There is one other technology that may go the whole way. With the promise of nanotechnology on the distant horizon, at least one visionary has suggested how we may build the fluid matter used in the T1000 terminator. Joe Michael of Robodyne systems has already prototyped a simple robot using the same principle, albeit on a much bigger physical scale.

The basic principle is simple. He constructs his robot out of cubes that can slide over each other along each surface. Each cube is able to hold specific tools and carry out specific functions. Thus, the robot can rearrange itself into any structure subject to the number and sizes of the cubes. But then there is the clever bit. Each cube is made of smaller ones and these can be made of smaller ones still. Using this principle Joe envisages a distant future where an entire building, the walls and furniture could all be composed of these fractal shape-changing robots. He suggests that a real holodeck with real re-configurable matter could be built. Once the sizes of the blocks gets down to micron levels, almost any texture, look and feel could be produced. Add some computing and sensory capability and you have a T1000 robot. But don't forget to program it with Asimov's laws of robotics, please! Since routine mechanical nanotechnology and the ability to produce micrometer size movable cubes should be with us around 2020, around the same time as smarter than man machines, we can expect very rapid development thereafter.

The very long-term future involves direct brain links – real Total Recall stuff, expected some time after 2030. This could in principle be completely indistinguishable from reality. Much of this idea has been explored in science fiction already, but we really must think about the consequences for individuals who live in unattractive places who may find it all too compelling to spend most of their spare time in synthetic worlds and shared spaces, far away from reality.