When I was a little kid, I was fond of building little cities in my room. I shaped whole towns from what I could find in my room: Hot Wheels, LEGOs, VHS cases, empty boxes, pillows… Imagination turns anything sufficiently interesting. My room looked very much like Andy’s room in Toy Story. In school, during recess, I enjoyed inventing my own language with hieroglyphs and writing secret mystery books. Reflecting back now two decades, I see that many of the things that brought me joy were about building worlds and I wonder how far I would have been in life had I listened to that inner child instead of adapting to the world.
The impulse to create little worlds must be something inherently human. It drives so much enthusiasm for sandbox video games like SimCity, Minecraft, and Cities: Skyline. As an adult, I have not lived up to the task of nourishing that bliss. Perhaps one way would be by retaking my coding projects and experimenting with virtual reality and computer graphics.
I suppose that impulse is widespread among humans. I suppose that impulse must be part of Nick Bostrom’s propositions about the simulation theory. Perhaps I am an architect within an architect’s mind.