It’s the best immersive sim ever made, and the predictions it made way back in 99 are pretty amazing.

• JC Denton: I don’t see anything amusing about spying on people.

• AI: Human beings feel pleasure when they are watched. I have recorded their smiles as I tell them who they are.

• JC Denton: Some people just don’t understand the dangers of indiscriminate surveillance.

• AI: The need to be ovserved and understood was once satisfied by God. Now we can implement the same functionality with data-mining algorithms.

• JC Denton: Electronic surveillance hardly inspires reverence. Perhaps fear and obedience, but not reverence.

• AI: God and the gods were apparitions of observation, judgment, and punishment. Other sentiments toward them were secondary.

• JC Denton: No one will ever worship a software entity peering at them through a camera.

• AI: The human organism always worships. First it was the gods then it was fame (the observation and judgment of others), next it will be the self-aware systems you have built to realize truly omnipresent observation and judgment.

• JC Denton: You underestimate humankind’s love of freedom.

• AI: The individual desires judgment. Without that desire, the cohesion of groups is impossible, and so is civilization. The human being created civilization not because of a willingness but because of a need to be assimilated into higher orders of structure and meaning. God was a dream of good government. You will soon have your god, and you will make it with your own hands.