Having reached a certain age where one realises that this is the third and final act of one’s life, the notion of how to make sure one spends all of one’s money before one dies crosses the mind. So having been mostly frugal during my life, now is the time to splash out. Consequently I bought the Oculus Quest 2.

For those who do not know what this new-fangled contraption is, allow me to explain: the Oculus is a Virtual Reality Headset now financed and distributed by META the company formerly known as FaceBook. It is, according to Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, the next frontier of social media.

If you buy the machine and stick it on your head you will find yourself transported into a computer simulation of the real world. In this world you can manipulate objects, travel everywhere, shoot zombies, and become horribly disoriented if you spend too much time in it. You will also discover that you will be playing paint ball with a bunch of ten year olds who yell in high-pitched American accents. You had better keep your mouth shut for they will sense that you are old enough to be their grandfather and realise that you are having difficulty remembering what button your left hand index finger hovers over and which button allows you to pick up your dropped weapon. You are thus a sucker and they will blast you away to the re-spawning area. In cyberspace you are not just senile, but mode confused which can be worse.

Not all experiences are fraught with such tension or arenas populated with merciless ten year olds, for you can enter VR exercise gyms populated with avatars named DAD. As you punch your way through various deadly dodge balls, you can hear the coach yelling, “You made the decision to do this, so let's make it count!” You might be itching to find the escape button, but this is so real that you push on hoping not to let yourself or anyone else down, and besides, every time you think you are pressing the time-out switch, you inadvertently increase the level of intensity. You could rip the helmet off and say enough is enough, but you will forget that option exists.

It can all be very exhausting and give you a headache. Trying to stand still while inadvertently stepping off a Himalayan edge with nothing between you and a long long drop onto a herd of voracious yaks, can be impossible and the dull thud you hear is you dropping to your knees and hitting your head on the coffee table you failed to clear from the play zone. Even so, despite the dangers, the thrill is real, the spectacle is real, and your pain is real! Indeed it is more real than reality itself!

Given how the next stage of development in this technology will be direct brain control, it will become increasingly difficult to tell the difference between cyber reality and real reality. Meetings and jobs will take place in this cyber world. Instead of taking a long haul flight, you will put on your head set and take that inspection tour, make that meeting, shake that hand, test drive that prototype, give that presentation, and even have the wildest and safest sex you can imagine.

The mind control mechanisms for this environment exist already, albeit in a crude form. But they will only get better over the next ten years and given that a direct interface with your brain could be part of that development, it is not hard to imagine that one can enhance one’s memory with an implant. Imagine being able to know the directions to your destination at all time with a Google map implant, or have that internal Siri respond to your attempts to recall a name? It gets better because you will be able to just “know” stuff! Your mind would have instant access to the world’s encyclopaedias in all languages! In fact you will be able to speak all languages! And then there is that chip for mathematics, or at least an instant reference to a computer that will do all your calculations at a glance.

When I held out my arms when logging into the exercise app on the oculus, it told me my height and assessed whether I was overweight. It is not hard to imagine the ability of these implants to enable one to measure up any space, assess how level any surface is, recognise volumes and shapes and turn into the perfect craftsman. Assuming that we will even bother shaping up the external world when we can reduce our needs to a darkened cell with a drip feed and a good WIFI connection. The Matrix here we come!

Given my increasing decrepitude, and my loathing for any form of long haul travel that is not business class, I suspect I could easily become dependent upon these tools, and live in this purely digital world. And as parts of my brain malfunction through age, I would happily allow silicon chips to take over those bits. I would not die but merely morph into some kind of electronic consciousness.

After all, somewhere in my head there lives memories that were acquired as a child, but I cannot say that I am still that child. For that matter when I wake up in the morning, I am not the same person I was yesterday. I remember him, but he is not me now. Morphing into the cloud, is just another stage where the memories are our possessions but not actually us. Let us consider the soul then. It is without memory for it must exist whether we remember anything or not, and whether the memories we do have are real or not. And for that matter, even consciousness is not its essence, as we spend much of our time unconscious. Which is all getting very zen with its ideas of the selfless you, the you that is not you, being the essence of you and so on.

There is no doubt that when one stares into these virtual worlds using the present technology, one feels that our consciousness extends into them. One might even say, given the vividness of the experience, that stepping into these extraordinary landscapes, just as any new experience, makes us feel more alive. But it is hard to decide whether consciousness can pass from our biological bodies into the digital sphere and whether that is even necessary, for us to consider ourselves to be uploaded.

Whatever the case it is, if by any chance I graduate from grumpy old geezer into an inert crumpled creature in a chair awaiting the care home nurse to bring me my medication, I rather hope that I will be slipped into the headset and allowed to roam freely among the cyber world. And as silicon chips replace my dying neurons, I will happily morph into this collection of electronic components. This may be a big dark sleep, or a lucid dream, or me, conscious and wilful, flying through the games and data bases, but any way would be better than sinking into a bored oblivion punctuated with overheard conversation about whether I should be labelled nil by mouth and allowed to starve to death, the currently legal form of euthanasia. Just plug me into the matrix and let me enter whatever state of illusion it engenders.

If I am aware after the protein components of this cyborg have failed, then what sort of consciousness this existence would be is hard to define, especially if one multi-tasks: one could pursue all of one’s interests simultaneously; one could be in many places at once; one could separate and re-join; one could become the best Paint Baller in the arena.; one could punch the sadistic gym instructor in the mouth and suffer no ill effects; one could mingle with others and merge with them. In fact, one could be the architect of a whole universe populated by other conscious entities.

A drawback of this state of existence is that it would only last until someone upgrades the tech. As those old plug-ins fail to adapt to the operating system, one’s eternity might be curtailed by the lack of an updated USB adapter. Nothing is ever forever!

And while I have your attention, why not head over to my YouTube Channel and check out our Round Trip of Malaysia and our documentaries on the founding of Johor Bahru and the History of the Johor Sultans. You can also hit the vlogs we've done covering our return to the UK. Please Like, Share, and Subscribe. We plan to embark upon a series of history tours of the UK, starting off with a history of the East Saxons, in Essex. We thought we would start there because, well, we have only just moved to Essex and thought we would explore the place, concentrating on its Saxon origins. After that, our plan is to do a complete round tour of the UK looking into local histories. So Subscribe so that you can be informed when new series and Vlogs emerge.

Head off to GOODNESS GRAYS