Virtual Dialectic
The Virtual Dialectic: Rethinking The Matrix and its Significance
David J. Gunkel Northern Illinois University
Rather than designating the choice between good and evil, my Either/Or designates the choice by which one chooses good and evil or rules them out.1
The debates and decisions surrounding virtual reality, cyberspace, and other forms of computer-mediated communication have been, like so much philosophical reasoning within the Western tradition, organized around antinomies. One of the principal concerns involves a conflict between the real world and the computer-generated simulations that appear to threaten it. As Peter Horsfield describes it, the question is whether the essential characteristics of virtual reality as a reality in which the frustrations and disappointments of the actual world do not exist will inevitably lead to a diminishing desire to live in the actual world. So, instead of learning the disciplines of living with or changing one’s individual or communal environment, one finds it easier to escape into a reality where these practicalities do not exist.2
This apparent conflict between the real and the virtual, and the various considerations it entails, is perhaps best dramatized in a pivotal scene from The Matrix (1999)—the first episode of a cinematic trilogy
1. Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, Part II, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987), p. 169. 2. Peter Horsfield, “Continuities and Discontinuities in Ethical Reflections on Digital Virtual Reality,” Journal of Mass Media Ethics 18 (2004): 155–172, quote on 166.
Configurations, 2006, 14:193–215 © 2008 by The Johns Hopkins University Press and the Society for Literature and Science.
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written and directed by Andy and Larry Wachowski.3 In this scene, the leader of the opposition, Morpheus, presents Neo, the protagonist, with a decisive choice
David J. Gunkel Northern Illinois University
Rather than designating the choice between good and evil, my Either/Or designates the choice by which one chooses good and evil or rules them out.1
The debates and decisions surrounding virtual reality, cyberspace, and other forms of computer-mediated communication have been, like so much philosophical reasoning within the Western tradition, organized around antinomies. One of the principal concerns involves a conflict between the real world and the computer-generated simulations that appear to threaten it. As Peter Horsfield describes it, the question is whether the essential characteristics of virtual reality as a reality in which the frustrations and disappointments of the actual world do not exist will inevitably lead to a diminishing desire to live in the actual world. So, instead of learning the disciplines of living with or changing one’s individual or communal environment, one finds it easier to escape into a reality where these practicalities do not exist.2
This apparent conflict between the real and the virtual, and the various considerations it entails, is perhaps best dramatized in a pivotal scene from The Matrix (1999)—the first episode of a cinematic trilogy
1. Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, Part II, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987), p. 169. 2. Peter Horsfield, “Continuities and Discontinuities in Ethical Reflections on Digital Virtual Reality,” Journal of Mass Media Ethics 18 (2004): 155–172, quote on 166.
Configurations, 2006, 14:193–215 © 2008 by The Johns Hopkins University Press and the Society for Literature and Science.
193
14.3.01Gunkel-LM.indd 193
7/30/08 1:27:13 PM
194
Configurations
written and directed by Andy and Larry Wachowski.3 In this scene, the leader of the opposition, Morpheus, presents Neo, the protagonist, with a decisive choice