I loved reading Poster this week. I believe he is a psychic and doesn't know it. Twenty years ago, he literally described our current world. He said, "[T]here is every reason to think that virtual reality technologies will develop rapidly and will eventually enable participation through the Internet. Connected to one's home computer one will experience an audiovisual 'world' generated from a node somewhere in the Internet and this will include other participants in the same way that today one can communicate with others on bulletin boards in video-text." In my opinion, this is the reality of the online gaming community. This community, however, is in constantly evolving and it still has space to expand, making it possible for the multiple realities exposed by the author to grow.
It is a scary, but fascinating future. Maybe the virtual reality will reach a whole new level and open space for new ones. There is an anime called Sword Art Online (me being a nerd again) that explores this exact concept. In the series, video games have become so advanced that people are able to immerse themselves in the game as if it was an entire new world. They feel the grass, they feel emotion, and eventually they even feel pain.
Why are we so fascinated about escaping our own realities? Why do we constantly seek to create new ones? This contemporary search for the "perfect" virtual realm juxtaposes what is exposed (and fought against) in The Matrix. In the movie, humans are trying to escape a fake reality to live a real one. However, in our present situation, we do the exact opposite.
This concept is explored by Dorfman and Eco when they talk about Disney. For Dorfman, Disney represents an escape from reality. People immerse themselves in a fake environment to escape everyday life. It is almost as if these individuals walked into a theme park to feel nostalgia for something they never had. Disney is not a reality lived by any real person. Still, people feel a sense of longing relating to every aspect of the franchise. Although Disney is not the real world, some people only seem happy when immersed in this sea of (capitalist) make-belief. Following a similar path to Dorfman, Eco talks about the safety we feel among technology. Disney represents the hyperreal, the fake, and the electronic as the desirable. Technology provides more reality than nature and contemporary people are more comfortable in this environment.
Some people immerse themselves in Disney to escape "normal" life; others immerse themselves in video game simulators. These virtual realms are each time more "real," but, at the same time, further from our own universe, toying with the possibility of creating an entirely new one. I wonder what circumstances (cough cough capitalism) led contemporary people to feel this intense need to escape from our own world.
ReplyDeleteI always love your posts, Marcie. They’re so well written and thought provoking, and I find myself agreeing with the majority of your points. I love Sword Art Online too because it challenges the notion of a virtual reality as a source of solace and escape; the pain within that world becomes just as real and visceral as that of the reality we know. While the virtual reality we know hasn’t yet progressed to this level, it still is something that changes the world in which we live, the relationships we develop, and even our sense of self. This plays on Poster’s idea that, “virtual reality takes the imaginary of the word and the imaginary of the film or video image one step farther by placing the individual ‘inside’ alternative worlds. By directly tinkering with reality, a simulational practice is set in place which alters forever the conditions under which the identity of self is formed” (446).
Because this virtual reality influences the development of our sense of self, we are subject once more to the forces of capitalism. Much of virtual reality has come to exist under the same system of consumerism that physical reality does – so while virtual reality may present a form of escape into other worlds, it is now becoming less of an escape, and simply a manifestation of our society’s ideals transposed onto other worlds.
At the same time, this “intense need to escape from our own world,” as you so eloquently put it, is exactly what has resulted in the creation of so many other complex, beautiful realities. I still have hope for the revolutionary potential of technology, even as the Internet becomes more and more commoditized. I believe Poster shares this hope: as he states, “Technology has taken a turn that defines the character of power of modern governments” (445). This can either be a very good thing, or a very bad thing. Even with how much technology and virtual reality have progressed in the past decades, it is still a relatively new operative force within our society. It provides new opportunities to build community, share ideas, and unite people on a global scale. However, it also offers very real potential for exploitation and the increased power/surveillance of governments and corporations. I believe the coming years will determine how technology shapes the world, for better, for worse, or for a combination of the two.