Thirty-five years ago, a journalist wrote something that keeps us awake at night: computers as “a drug of the future” that offers “artificial happiness.” It seemed like an exaggeration, one of those predictions that are destined to age badly. Instead, the opposite happened. The virtual world that was then described as a futuristic threat has become our natural habitat.
Every day we spend hours in digital environments, we seek instant gratification on screens, we build alternative identities through avatars. That “electronic cocaine” that was talked about in 1990 has a name today: it is simply called “everyday life”.
When the future knocked on the newspapers' door
The 25 January 1990, The print published an article that today makes your wrists tremble. The title was unequivocal: “Computers, cocaine of the future. It gives an artificial and dangerous happiness”. But it didn't stop there. The article detailed how “electronic simulation” would turn our fantasies into reality, creating behavioral addictions similar to those of narcotic substances.
The piece went beyond simple provocation. It spoke of people who would spend hours immersed in virtual worlds, losing contact with physical reality. He described how these digital environments would offer experiences that were “more pervasive and controllable” than real ones, creating a powerful form of psychological addiction. Literally, he was describing 2025..
The virtual world that wasn't supposed to exist does exist
Today We know that there are 141 virtual worlds active, populated by hundreds of millions of avatars. The metaverse market is already worth hundreds of billions and The European Commission estimates a growth of 800 billion euros by 2030. That 1990 article even predicted this: it talked about a parallel economy that would develop around “virtual happiness.”
But the most chilling prediction was about neurobiological effects. The paper suggested that interacting with virtual environments would change the brain's pleasure circuits, just as traditional drugs do. Recent research confirms that Internet addiction causes brain changes similar to those caused by cocaine, heroin and alcohol. Researchers call this phenomenon “digital cocaine” without even knowing that the term had already been coined in 1990.
The Prophecy of Social Control Through the Virtual World
The print of 1990 contained a particularly disturbing passage. The author, Ennio Caretto, historical journalist and foreign correspondent writer, suggested that virtual worlds would become tools of social control, offering people an outlet for frustrations and unfulfilled desires in real life. A form of digital “opium of the people” that would make the masses more docile and less inclined to rebel.
Saving How companies today use the virtual world to influence purchasing behavior and as governments study these environments to understand social mechanisms, that prediction sends chills down the spine. 77% of online business projects focus on retail and entertainment: exactly what the article predicted as “commercialization of the dream”.
The Dark Side of Artificial Happiness in the Virtual World
The most prophetic aspect of the article delved into the possible psychosocial consequences. It spoke of people who would prefer virtual relationships to real ones, of young people unable to distinguish between digital and physical experiences, of a society increasingly fragmented between those who live in the virtual world and those who resist it.
Current studies show that intensive use of virtual worlds can lead to social isolation, exactly as feared in 1990. The possibility of living alternate lives through perfect avatars creates unrealistic expectations towards physical reality. As we also explained in this insight into psychological risks of technology, the line between digital and real identity is becoming dangerously thin.
When Forecasting Becomes Instruction for Use
The most bitter paradox is that that article of The print was not meant to be a manual, but a warning. It described a dystopian future that it hoped to avert through awareness. Instead, it almost seems as if humanity has used those predictions as a roadmap to the present.
Irony of fate? Today, researchers are using virtual reality to study and treat cocaine addiction., closing a conceptual circle that began thirty years ago. The computer has not become the cocaine of the future: it has become something more subtle and pervasive. It has become the air we breathe in the virtual world we have built around ourselves.
Maybe we should thank that journalist from 1990. Not for having made the wrong predictions, but for having hit them with a precision that forces us to look at ourselves in the mirror.
