Can we live all our life in Zero G?

On Nov 27, 2007 1:23 AM, wrote:
(...)
> I'm sure such artificial realities will indeed be popular, but I myself
> won't live in one -- maybe visit for a few weeks' vacation, but the
> moment I find myself tempted to stay, I'm logging out and returning to
> my nice solid artificial body in the real world.
(...)

I think that such uploaded "people" will be able to live and work in
artificial realities *without* loosing contact with the physical
world; I don't see a choice of the type "one or the other" here.

For instance suppose that you are a virtual person living in one of
the computronium ball habitats. You and your society of virtual people
"see" an artificial reality of their choice - say an earth-like
planet. However, you know that there is a physical reality in the
"outside" and in fact you *need* that reality. For instance the
population of "virtuals" may grow and you need to manufacture another
computronium ball, that is, more hardware, to run them. Then you would
need to, say, detect, intercept and "colonize" a small meteoroid
transforming its raw materials into computronium. That work would have
to be done by physical probes and robots that could even be "piloted"
or controled by virtuals.

Of course, I guess that most of those "people" would see the physical
world much like the urban population of nowadays world sees, say,
agriculture. I see vegetables and meat and other stuff in my plate, I
know that I need them, and I know that they are somehow produced in
distant places outside my city. But they are not my main concern,
there are specialized professionals taking care of them.