Unpredictable. Unfocused. Just like life.

Nicholas Carr comments on the invention of virtual drugs:

Here's a snippet: "Up to now, avatars have led fairly narrow lives. Their main pursuits have been limited to fighting ogres and dragons and having simulated sex using artificial genitalia. Virtual reality has been like a pornographic version of Middle Earth. Now, avatars have a third and more modern alternative: abusing substances. Fighting, screwing, and getting wasted: Virtual life is becoming more like real life every day."

In the movie The Matrix it is explained to Neo that the machines first created a simulation of a perfect world but the humans couldn't deal with it. So the machines created a second simulation of an imperfect world which humans were much better able to deal with. If you are creating a virtual world from scratch, why not eliminate all of the problems with the real world? Why emulate them?

I remember reading Snow Crash for the first time almost a decade ago.And now it seems to have almost come true.