Idea for a short story
Despite massive future technological advancements, eventually humanity has to admit that, in the words of one prominent engineer, 'you cannot change the laws of physics'. Interstellar travel is simply not a realistic proposition. Mankind is forever limited to its own solar system. Culture turns inward, increasingly living in private virtual universes, closed off to the outside world. It becomes fashionable to model alien planets to explore and then solar systems, finally, using solar system wide computer networks, an entire procedurally generated galaxy, a shared virtual universe in which faster than light travel is possible and into which explorers can at last set off to go where no one has gone before.