Is the Internet the Enemy of Progress?

the pull of online reality and headset-mediated simulations almost automatically carries us toward a variation on the Crichton dystopia, a version of stagnation that’s sustained by the illusion of exploration, an age of fundamental conformity disguised by the personal tailoring of everyone’s private holodeck.

The diversity of personalized simulated realities with sensory-dense stimulation will become a commodity. It will result in wide-open spaces with nothing to do becoming a luxury good, available only to the affluent.