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The dude can possibly understand what you're doing, but he wouldn't be able to understand why you're doing it. Merely one century of cultural evolution completely changes what most of society's interested in.But it does not fundamentally change the concept of self. The dude from 1917 has an analogue through which he can understand and relate to it.
There's been a couple of "what if", and the most probable reaction: "you have access to all of the world's knowledge instantly, and you're using it for PICTURES OF CATS?!? WHY?!? U STOOPID?".
That's why when people think "we're all heading into VR simulations", I'm highly skeptical. Because that's imagining what we would do. Just like 1900's newspapers were showing the future as 1900's people doing the same thing as 1900's people, except with flying bicycles.
And they (because that's not us old geezers, that's going to be our grandkids) won't be doing that. They're going to have their future equivalent of swapping cat video memes, which will be completely incomprehensible to us.
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