The Limits of Fiction

The holodeck does not yet exist.  I will argue here that it may never exist, and that despite its allure, we may not want it to.  The holodeck is an invention of Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek, and features prominently in several series, The Next Generation, Voyager, and Deep Space Nine.  Similar technologies have appeared in science fiction before, from Huxley’s feelies or the wall-to-wall televisions in Fahrenheit 451.  Janet Murray is most responsible for directly linking videogame studies to the holodeck, along with Brenda Laurel’s similar notions before her.  Essentially, the holodeck is a three-dimensional hologram projector with the computational power necessary to react believably to any actions taken by the human participant.  This includes rendering fully-human (or alien) characters with which to converse and projecting environments which the participant may interact with physically.  For the moment, we will ignore the as-yet unrealized technology for generating tangible holographic objects, and instead concentrate on the internal logic of a perfect simulator. Read more »

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