I agree as well, although I'm not sure about the living one's whole life in VR point. There's been various shows/stories about what happens as people jack in and their health and hygiene deteriorates and food consumption becomes an issue.

Another convergence that I see is the virtualization of money, everything from the Mobil Speedpass to Amazon one-click shopping. They are already looking at RFID for shopping - not needing to go to a cashier, but instead the contents of your bag are scanned on the way out, and the amount instantly deducted from your credit card.

Ah yes, but what if you could clone yourself onto the system.....You would exist as information just like everything else in a VR environment.

Given a huge distributed network, it should be fairly easy to hide your core code somewhere in a secure node :) Your consciousness would be immortal unless the entire network ceased to exist. But the nature of such a network is to extend itself, as some parts die, you would just move on into another node or system.

But would it be you? A tricky question to be sure.

Without getting into theological questions about souls and such. Given the technology to completely transfer your consciousness into code and your physical body is dead.....then , yes it would be "you". The only "you" that is left :)

As the brain is electrical in nature, I've no doubt that such a thing will possible someday. The big hurdle is bandwidth. If you think of the brain as a computer, it takes in and outputs an incredible amount of information. Just typing this post is probably gigs of info flowing between my eyes, fingers, arms, every little muscle being controlled. Also listening to music so that's even more :)

We aren't there yet but I really have no doubt we will find a way. There are too many different medias converging and our computers keep getting better and better.

Did you see this about Holograms that react to touch?

http://www.physorg.com/news168797748.html

Tad Williams is picking up on a long tradition in science fiction. In Heinlein's "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress," the network of computers on the moon becomes large and complex enough that "it" become sentient as "Mike" and creates what now would definitely be called VR. In Orson Scott Card's Ender tetralogy (1984-1996), the interstellar net gives birth to "Jane," an FTL intelligence than can take a highly proactive role in the universe.
And going the other way, in three of Heinlein's last novels ("Time Enough for Love," "Thge Number of the Beast," and "To Sail Beyond the Sunset" [1979 to 1986]), A "Mike/Jane" type of superintelligent computer leaves VR and becomes human, copying its intelligence into a cloned human body.
But I have my doubts that we're even close to any of these scenarios.