Virtually real: Tim Landsman is inspired by the Future of British Quakerism conference

‘Travelling to the Meeting house is a bit of a pain these days, relying on the driverless taxis.’

At the recent Future of British Quakerism conference, Paul Parker offered various scenarios for what our Society could look like in years to come. It made me think: twenty-six years ago my mobile phone didn’t have a camera, and it struggled with text messaging. My home computer could only really run one application at a time, and I was thinking about whether I needed a home fax machine. So where could technology take Quakers in another twenty-six years?

Imagine it is 2050.

You finish breakfast, and check the time on your wrist-tat. Realising that it is only ten minutes until Meeting for Worship starts, you reach for your virtual reality (VR) headset. It took a little while to get used to the equipment needed to reach virtually into the world, but now it is second nature. Whether shopping, banking, visiting friends, playing games or watching entertainment, your headset gives a more or less seamless experience – never quite as good as advertised, but good enough.

As you slip on your VR mittens, knee pads and fabric helmet, and engage the starting switch, it all hums to life. It is all initially dark, with some illuminated numbers and symbols flashing. The dark lightens to a mist, and an advert for upgrading your software flickers in front of you . You dismiss it with a finger swipe. You mutter for it to take you to ‘Virtual Meeting Kent, Quaker’ and the familiar bookcase-lined walls of the virtual Meeting room lobby materialise around you.

You recognise the Friends chatting in front of you. A soft female voice calls out ‘welcome Friend’ from behind you. As you turn, she takes your hand in hers and shakes it. You can feel her warm hand through the feedback-enabled mittens. You return her smile. Mary has used the same avatar for a number of years now, without letting it age, and she is probably looking a little more mature than the vision facing you. Still, your avatar is also a little out of date. You recall one of the newer Advices & queries to ‘always try to show the real you’, with a wry smile.

We have a visitor. ‘This is Alice,’ Mary says, and points me to a slender young woman with flowing blonde hair, dressed in a dark suit. I offer her my hand and she shakes it gently. 

‘Have you been to a Quaker Meeting before?’ I ask her.

‘No, but I have informed myself about it. The immersive experience you can download is very well done. I think I understand about the settling down to listen for the leadings of the spirit, and really wanted to try it with a group.’ She spoke with enthusiasm – her VR aura sparkled orange. (I’ve never quite got the hang of auras and generally just stick to the deep blue which I have been reliably informed means serious or formal.) 

‘Well, you are in the right place,’ I smiled, and gesturing her to the door of the Meeting room, asked: ‘Shall we go in?’

I opened the old-fashioned wooden door and we walked into the next room. It was laid out as a traditional Meeting house. A bare-walled square room, some ten yards to each side, with big windows showing lots of blue sky. In the centre of the room was a simple oak table, with a scattering of Quaker faith & practice tablets and a bunch of peace roses in a plain vase. Around it were concentric circles of two-dozen padded wooden chairs.

Some Meeting houses like to vary their look each week – sometimes modern, sometimes old, sometimes a seventeenth-century barn, or even a mountain top. We like to keep things a bit more simple here, and stick to a classic view that we haven’t changed in the dozen years I had been coming.

‘Mary, as duty elder, looked concerned, and shone an aura of a soothing light green.’

There were already a number of Friends sitting in worship. One was reading and the others sat quietly with their eyes shut. We sat down and others filed in and joined us. Nearly all the chairs were taken.

The worship feels fairly calm and gathered, to me, with only a couple of Friends ministering – the first a popular Advice on finding God wherever we look or listen, and the next a deeply-felt cry of pain from an elderly male Friend on the latest news of extreme weather ravaging the Mediterranean coastlines. His aura pulsed black with sadness and distress. Mary, as duty elder, looked concerned, and shone an aura of a soothing light green, reaching out with a gentle VR touchstroke of compassion. Other Friends’ auras pulsed pastel shades in support. Poor Roger’s avatar kept shuddering and occasionally squeaking; it might be just a bandwidth problem but he has had a habit of getting virused in the past.

Notices were fairly short and perfunctory. We did a run round of names to introduce Alice, and James pointed out that his avatar had been refreshed. Concern was raised about Ruth, who’d been arrested again for trying to smuggle food into the climate refugee zone, and for Alan, whose mother had been hospitalised after being offline for two days. There was an all-age family Meeting planned for the following week. Raj, the Children’s Committee convenor, needed a few more volunteers to help design a new VR playroom.

Then we chatted together in small groups about life, Quakers and the rest of the universe, over virtual drinks that smelled wonderful, although I had never got the hang of virtual tasting. Alice seemed happy with how the Meeting had felt, and said she planned to come back, although she couldn’t make next week. Jim noted that Alice would help to bring our average down a bit, as it was creeping up again. Janet muttered about our lack of diversity: everyone is a middle-class human, we hadn’t had an AI attend for ages, how can we attract them? And they never seem to come back.

Dorothy asked if anyone would like to have a physical Meeting later in the week. Possibly at our old Meeting house, now used as a shelter for the homeless. Several of us agreed and set a time, although travelling all the way over there is a bit of a pain these days, relying on the driverless taxis, buses and trains. 

At this point I remembered I needed to get back home, said my goodbyes and disengaged the VR.

Instantly I was back sitting in my kitchen, with a slightly stiff body and with my empty plate from breakfast still in front of me.

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