Here we are in virtual reality

So we talked about the role of technology in bringing us a virtual reality. We talked about the meaning of virtual reality. Goode notes that Pierre Levy in ‘Becoming Virtual (1998)’ states that the virtual liberates us from time and space, the here and now. Levy reminds us that language is virtual and that the computer age has taken the evolution of The Virtual to a new level. I am still confused myself if it is that we take a step forward, or backward, in questioning “What really is virtual reality?”

Is this, the physical world that is in relation and in fact driven by the psychological world of each individual, a virtual reality itself? And therefore, isn’t the psychological world the real reality? It is our belief in the way we are being perceived that we perpetuate or change the way we live. For lack of space, and that we are already in access of the internet, ‘Google’ Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities and G.H. Mead’s Mind, Self and Society. So it is we find the commonplace throwaway “You don’t get me”, so it is we find on ourselves the tools to express ourselves (e.g. our face, our hands), and so it is we find that this virtual reality is failing us and we turn to a virtual-virtual reality. Someone said in class, and I agree, that this which we call virtual is only an extension of what is already virtual. We might have brought ourselves closer to our own reality by reducing our identity to words on a forum or taking on a better body shape that would fit perfectly with the dress of our desire, and this in effect liberating us from our physical constraints which has blinded the world to who we really are. Indeed, it could be argued that our newfound freedom finds us frightfully shameless, be it in bashing civilians on Grand Theft Auto or overindulging in lewd exchanges with a woman in a chatroom.

Consider if we found a better capability of getting closer to our reality as we for ourselves know it, through the use of words or music or other art forms, that suddenly through our expression of personal style with such mediums on a blog or in a chat room, this aggressive and coherent flow of our expression could do more for us in relating to people who partake of our work (the audience). Could it be that what we call abstraction that is the quality of this virtual-virtual reality is a better representation of the true reality of the individual participant than the tangible quality of touch, eye-to-eye contact and the visual image packaging of clothes sized 4 to 42? I say, to those who dig a band for it's music and not it's drug abusive band members, you've got the idea.