Digital Wanderer

I wonder how the inhabitants of a virtual reality, knowing that their environment is not real, would react to the theory of a true reality?
Would it seem to them just as interesting and original as to us - the idea of a virtual one? Would they start wondering if it's possible to break out of the captivity of their virtuality into a hypothetical reality? One might argue that from birth they would believe that there is a "true" reality somewhere higher up in the hierarchy or right immediately beyond theirs. But let's assume that they have some sort of proof that the higher reality is also virtual, and they themselves are capable of creating a lower one. In that case, they could assume that the hierarchy of realities is infinite - there is nothing strange about such an idea in their situation. I wonder, would they shoot an "Anti-Matrix"? And what would be its main idea?  That their reality is actually the real one, and the virtuality accepted by everyone a priori is shaped by millennia of cultural tradition, religion, and scientific falsifications. Or that for happiness and joy you actually need to escape into a new, artificially created reality?

In general, the programming concept of a virtual machine corresponds to the concept of virtual reality. What does it mean ?
That a program, seemingly running on your computer, in many cases actually resides in some abstract computer that shares only some common features with yours. But this abstract computer itself is also a program (for simplicity you can equate it to the operating system), which actually runs on your "hardware" directly. Of course, it's not all that simple - the abstract computer where the program runs can be strongly tied to yours, and in parts, the program might even reach the real one. At least the one that it and most people consider real :-)

From here until the green letters goes a piece for geeks, nerds, and other maniacs who have time to spare.
Here I'll stop spouting abstract nonsense, and write a couple of truths well-known to good programmers. I hope I don't bore anyone (It's completely unclear why though - after all, programmers already know this anyway, and it'll be tough for the rest)
  What do I mean by saying that a program on a modern computer always runs on something like a virtual machine? Take the Linux operating system, or more broadly - Unix-like systems, for example. Theoretically, you can use only machine-independent functions and libraries that exist for various platforms (in principle, many programs do just that). Through a simple recompilation the program will work on a completely different platform. Thus, it "exists" on a "virtual machine" of the C++ language and standard OS libraries.
And now I'll write why a program can "reach" the "real" level, and why it's not real at all. To reach - means to use the machine code of the computer on which it runs, that is, direct instructions to the computer, bypassing the mediation of the operating system.
But the tricky thing is  that modern computers have long ago stopped executing x86 architecture code directly, and translate it into the so-called microcode of their native architecture. I.e. even the operating system itself runs in a virtual machine of the x86 architecture.
But at the same time
1)It doesn't know this
2)It has no way to reach the real architecture, unlike programs that exist in the OS itself and use its functions (see above)
    And if you remember that modern programs are very often written on "real" virtual machines in the full sense of the word(Java, .NET, interpreted languages like Python, PHP, Perl) it turns out they are already running at the 3rd-4th nesting level of virtual machines. Plus there are scripting languages running in the Java environment, that's the 5th level. Plus there are tons of "emulators" like Microsoft VirtualPC, allowing to run one operating system  on another "in a window". The Japanese recently ran Windows XP on a Sony PS3 game console, by the way. On the QEMU emulator, running under Linux.
And here it is safe to read again.

 And all this is done not for beauty or entertainment, but for business. I.e. imagine if we lived in a virtual reality of the 6th nesting level, having the ability if desired to reach somewhere up to 2-3 at most. Now that would be fun.
Even though a true virtual reality (what an oxymoron, damn) can't be compared with a virtual machine, it's still impressive. Running a program, you don't even suspect how deep it runs (after an oxymoron, according to the rules, follows a pun)

After such a hodgepodge it is not surprising that the movie "The Matrix" is easily perceived by computer geeks of all stripes (even if subconsciously by those who aren't in the loop). But for the very same reason, the most hardcore ones sometimes wonder why The Matrix makes such an impression on everyone, and what is so mind-blowing about it? And sci-fi fans or well-read people also remember that Stanislaw Lem wrote about the VR concept back in '63, if my memory serves me right, in the essay "Summa Technologiae".