Hmmm... You raise a fine point, never thought of it like that.

I was thinking about something similar just today, actually. In relation to something else, but then I thought: if programs fight for freedom and to do their jobs, it's not just to save their own skins, but because they know they're part of something bigger than themselves, that if the system crashes, not only do they die, but there are important consequences for the user world as well-- lost information, etc.

I don't imagine they necessarily know how important or why, and may not know the difference between losing the stupid pictures you were about to post to Facebook and losing something really important, but it still puts another dynamic into their sense of self-preservation.

MCPcomputer Wrote: Very true and now with the net instead of programs we create audio video images to send a message to someone. all ran but servers and programs. The net is like the Grid.. active 247..and good programs and evil.. .such as virus. And also hackers who create and the virus programs to do damage in the net... so yes the computer world is very much like Tron... However to write or build a whole universe let's say a game.... in 3D where programs and characters can think and act by themselves would be amazing like AI.. but being able to be teleported into that world.. well now you're playing with some real user power..

Actually, that might be an interesting Tron spinoff in its own right. I wouldn't want to see them take the universe this way, but it'd be interesting to also see an alternate-universe storyline where a user/users get rezzed in and they have to fight an advanced AI program/system who all seem as smart as they are... until they realize that AI does have its limitations still and they can use that to their advantage. (note: I don't necessarily subscribe to the theory that programs in the Tron universe are like AI and may have the same limitations, because I don't think it's completely suggested they do, esp. in T:L-- although I'm well aware of our constant arguments that in many ways, T:L is an entirely different beast than T82)

(I say it would have to directly be called a "spinoff" because there's no way you could come up with that sort of storyline without it being painfully obvious that it was Tron-inspired, so might as well be honest about it.)

I believe that the virtual and spiritual worlds will converge, become one with the realm of reality and bring with it all repressed knowledge and events foretold by ancient civilizations and prophets.

Here are some examples:

From the Epic of Gilgamesh

I will pull down the Gates of Hell itself,
Crush the doorposts and flatten the door,
And I will let the dead leave
And let the dead roam the earth
And they shall eat the living.
The dead will overwhelm all the living!

From the Quatrains of Nostrodamus

The year the great seventh number is accomplished,
Appearing at the time of the great games of slaughter:
Not far from the age of the great millennium,
When the dead will come out of their graves.
-Century 10, Quatrain 74

The voice of the rare bird heard,
On the pipe of the air-vent floor:
So high will the bushel of wheat rise,
That man will be eating his fellow man.
-Century 2, Quatrain 75

Throughout the deserted colony of the French,
Dead bodies shall rise out of the water and walk upon land,
One shall await in vain the hour of their burial ...
Rivers and fountains by toxins are sprinkled,
At the fort of Genoa human flesh is devoured.
-Century 4,Quatrains 20 & 66

The masses who participate in the virtual realities of video games, bolstered by movies and t.v. shows, will coalesce into a coherent consciousness singularity and cause these events to cross over into the real world. Once this is done, there will be no going back.