So I was celebrating Thanksgiving Day with some family tonight and the discussion got around to technology, which I always enjoy. We were chatting about simulations of reality, from Second Life to the Star Trek Holodeck.
At some point I threw out a question/concept that I have been thinking about for some time: What is reality’s bandwidth?
In other words, how much bandwidth would be needed to simulate a particular reality, say the living room in which I was sitting this evening, with the furniture, walls, floor, lighting, and sounds? Let’s forget for the moment simulating the feelings of the surrounding surfaces and objects – that technology is presented in the Holodeck on Star Trek, but it simply too far from development today to even attempt to quantify.
I think that it would be hard enough to quantify the bandwidth required to simulate sights and sounds that appeared to be indistinguishable from reality in three dimensional environment with a shifting point of view. This level of visual reality can’t be achieved even on a flat television screen yet; how much data would it take to render that in three dimensions if the technology existed?
I don’t know if we’re talking the transmission of terabytes per second or possibly the next couple of orders of magnitude up.
Just some Thanksgiving Day dinner conversation that I had tonight. Will someone please pass the gravy?






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