Perky Pat may yet solve global warming and the U.S. balance of trade deficit. For you that don't know her, Perky Pat was invented by my favorite sci-fi author, Philip K. Dick in his book The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. Perky Pat served as entertainment for hapless colonists on other planets:
Life on the colonised planets is so arduous and soul crushing, however, that new colonists must be rounded up with the use of a draft system. The only entertainment the colonists have comes from the consumption of Can-D – a psychotropic substance that induces collective hallucinations. The consciousnesses of the users become disembodied and "translate" into Barbie-like "Perky Pat" dolls, allowing them to lead an imaginary, idealised version of the lives they left behind on Earth.
Dick lived in pre-Internet times, and Perky Pat seemed to be derived from the Barbie phenomenon, with all her variations. But Barbie's accessories are physical objects. With the Internet, we have something even better: virtual goods. According to the BBC, the market for virtual goods in the U.S. over the next five years will be worth $5 billion.
What are virtual goods? These are items, like spells, weapons or even furniture, used in on-line gaming. No matter that these are just pixels on a screen.
Now back in the Dark Ages, I used to play a pre-Internet game called Wizardry on my Apple IIE. You and your band of heroes descended into a deep dark cave where you were forced to battle orcs and werewolves and deadly spiders. At every battle, your heroes lost hit points, and if you weren't able to resuscitate them, they could die. You could protect your heroes with various kinds of armor and outfit them with terrible weapons. These, of course, cost money--gold that you earned within the game. WITHIN THE GAME. But if your hero died, all those weapons and armor, with their inherent value, were lost too.
Eventually I learned how to cheat; I backed up my heroes and gave them different names, so when one was lost I could substitute another, complete with all his stuff. My son, who was all of four when I started playing Wizardry, did even better. He and his friends learned how to build up virtual goods and sell them for actual cold hard cash, transferring the goods to the heroes of other players.
Another great sci-fi writer, Neil Stephenson, predicted the effect of the Internet on people's life in his iconic novel, Snowcrash. In that novel, he predicted how valuable online real estate would become.
So now we have reached the ultimate reality, where you can buy stuff online that doesn't really exist, it's only function is within the game. But the money doesn't originate WITHIN THE GAME, but within the real economy. We're talking dollars, here, billions of dollars.
So how does that save the world? I lost all hope for humanity one Christmas when I visited my niece and her three (now four) sons. The back yard was piled high with brightly colored action figures made in China. Superman, Batman, Deputy Dawg, T-Rex, most I couldn't identify. They were piled in the back yard, because there was no more room in the play room, which was packed with the same kind of junk.
My niece and her husband were no better than her kids. They had all sorts of junk they had bought spilling out of the closets on to every horizontal space. Some of the boxes had never been opened. They worked in real estate at the height of the California boom.
I realized there was no end to consumerism. People always want more junk.
But now it doesn't have to be real junk. The genius of virtual goods is that they occupy no space and require hardly any energy or resources to produce.
Perky Pat and her virtual descendants will save us from global warming by satisfying our enormous cravings without the use of resources. It's a win/win.
And the U.S., the land of Facebook, My Space and the Internet itself has got to be an economic winner in the race to produce stuff that doesn't actually exist. This is better than Dial-a-prayer. The answer to our balance of payments problem. Sell the world pixels on a screen, for real money. I am in awe at the concept.
Of course, the original Perky Pat appealed to miners on a Mars that was colder than hell, who spent their free times in holes underground. Dropping a little Can-D was understandable. I wonder what it means that we here on Earth are willing to spend our dwindling paychecks to lead imaginary lives on the Internet.