Humankind's self esteem lowered with them becoming more and more dependant on AI systems. At the end of the 21st century, most people considered it a ridiculous thought that humans could be able to manually drive vehicles. For a majority of people, the moon landing was a hoax. How could an elaborate plan like this been developed and executed by humans without any AI planning system? Of course in reality, humans still controlled the machines. But it was only a very small minority of experts, cyborgs actually. The general public of "regular" humans instead fell into passivity. Because the real world was now organized mainly by AI systems - and actually it was more efficiently organized than ever before - there was no place left for human ambition there. So human ambition fled to the vast virtual realities people created. In there, they were still the masters. No AI was belittleling their capabilities. People lived long in the 22nd century, so their beliefs and disinterest in the real world lived on long. It took nearly century for a new view to emerge. By those younger people, the cyborg elites were now seen as their heros because they developed and improved the AI. At this point, many people were not longer comfortable with the AI systems taking over and staying in the VR all day. They wanted to be masters in the real world just like their ancestores were and just like their cyborg elite was every day. So they demanded to be augmented as well. A public movement emerged which claimed that "augmentation is a basic right of every human". They saw VR as the manifestation of human debasement. The cyborg elite had always despised the elaborate simulations distracting people from the real world. After a major political struggle between cyborg elites and the general public, the "augmentists" gradually dominated the political systems. Of course in the 22nd century, even anti-VR activists used some kind of basic VR. It was much too expensive and too dangerous to actually travel to Tokio just to have a meeting with business associates there. But they called it CR for Connected Reality instead. And researchers were very keen to stress that their research would not in any way allow to replace reality. Which kind of limited the possible novelties in this domain. At some point innovation in VR became unnoticable just like innovation in paving stones.

Humankind's self esteem lowered with them becoming more and more dependent on AI systems. At the end of the 21st century, most people considered it a ridiculous thought that humans could be able to manually drive vehicles. For a majority of people, the moon landing was a hoax. How could an elaborate plan like this been developed and executed by humans without any AI planning system? 

Of course in reality, humans still controlled the machines. But it was only a very small minority of experts, cyborgs actually. The general public of "regular" humans instead fell into passivity. Because the real world was now organized mainly by AI systems - and actually it was more efficiently organized than ever before - there was no place left for human ambition there. So human ambition fled to the vast virtual realities people created. 

In there, they were still the masters. No AI was belittleling their capabilities. People lived long in the 22nd century, so their beliefs and disinterest in the real world lived on long. It took nearly century for a new view to emerge. By those younger people, the cyborg elites were now seen as their heros because they developed and improved the AI. At this point, many people were not longer comfortable with the AI systems taking over and staying in the VR all day. They wanted to be masters in the real world just like their ancestores were and just like their cyborg elite was every day. So they demanded to be augmented as well. 

A public movement emerged which claimed that "augmentation is a basic right of every human". They saw VR as the manifestation of human debasement. The cyborg elite had always despised the elaborate simulations distracting people from the real world. After a major political struggle between cyborg elites and the general public, the "augmentists" gradually dominated the political systems. Of course in the 22nd century, even anti-VR activists used some kind of basic VR. It was much too expensive and too dangerous to actually travel to Tokio just to have a meeting with business associates there. But they called it CR for Connected Reality instead. And researchers were very keen to stress that their research would not in any way allow to replace reality, which kind of limited the possible novelties in this domain. At some point innovation in VR became unnoticable just like innovation in paving stones.