Virtuality
1. Introduction
A better world free from the boundaries we experience in our real lives, dismissing the chance of being socially isolated and improving the communication within our society. These are a few of the expectations of Virtual Reality, a technology which arose back in the 90s and promised to offer new possibilities in how we perceive our lives. Virtual worlds would offer us a better way of experiencing life than our real world. Authors such as John Perry Barlow and Julian Dibbell searched for a way to define this new technology by creating a distinction between the virtual and real world.
When Barlow experienced the new technology, he described it as a world without any of the usual limits, with no laws at all beyond those imposed by computer processing speed (Barlow 1990).
While Barlow attempted to define a clear distinction between our virtual and real world, Dibbell realized both worlds are actually very much alike. The virtual world lets us experiment with our world and our identity, yet does involve real human emotions. Slowly but effectively we began to realize both worlds share a lot of similarities and was the virtual world increasingly taking part of our real life. Although the technology lost its hype and people began to distance themselves from the old expectations VR was going to deliver, authors such as Jaron Lanier still had high hopes for it. He believed people use VR to be able to share a dream with someone else and to take a little step away from the sense of isolation that people feel today. Steven Shaviro however felt that this revolutionary promise was unfulfilled and that it was impossible to achieve in the first place.
Although distanced from, the fulfillment of these old VR expectations are recognizable in social network sites such as Facebook. This social network allows us to connect with our real friends in a virtual world and attempts to enhance our social life. Our isolation is being dismissed and are we steering towards
A better world free from the boundaries we experience in our real lives, dismissing the chance of being socially isolated and improving the communication within our society. These are a few of the expectations of Virtual Reality, a technology which arose back in the 90s and promised to offer new possibilities in how we perceive our lives. Virtual worlds would offer us a better way of experiencing life than our real world. Authors such as John Perry Barlow and Julian Dibbell searched for a way to define this new technology by creating a distinction between the virtual and real world.
When Barlow experienced the new technology, he described it as a world without any of the usual limits, with no laws at all beyond those imposed by computer processing speed (Barlow 1990).
While Barlow attempted to define a clear distinction between our virtual and real world, Dibbell realized both worlds are actually very much alike. The virtual world lets us experiment with our world and our identity, yet does involve real human emotions. Slowly but effectively we began to realize both worlds share a lot of similarities and was the virtual world increasingly taking part of our real life. Although the technology lost its hype and people began to distance themselves from the old expectations VR was going to deliver, authors such as Jaron Lanier still had high hopes for it. He believed people use VR to be able to share a dream with someone else and to take a little step away from the sense of isolation that people feel today. Steven Shaviro however felt that this revolutionary promise was unfulfilled and that it was impossible to achieve in the first place.
Although distanced from, the fulfillment of these old VR expectations are recognizable in social network sites such as Facebook. This social network allows us to connect with our real friends in a virtual world and attempts to enhance our social life. Our isolation is being dismissed and are we steering towards
References: Barlow, John Perry. 1990. Being in Nothingness: Virtual Reality and the Pioneers of Cyberspace. Mondo 2000, 2: 34-43. Benkler, Y. (2011). Networks of power, degrees of freedom. International Journal of Communication 5. Bolten, Sanne. "Het Cyberpest-virus." Metareporter. 10 Oct. 2010. Web. 24 May 2012. . Dibbell, Julian. 1998. My Tiny Life: Crime and Passion in a Virtual World. New York: Henry Holt, 11-29. Foucault, Michel. 1986. Of Other Spaces. Trans. Jay Miskowiec. Diacritics 16, 1: 22-27. Heilbrun, Adam. ‘A vintage virtual reality interview.’ Whole Earth Review, 1988. Rheingold, Howard. The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Pub., 1993. Print. Shaviro, Steven. 2007. Money for Nothing: Virtual Worlds and Virtual Economies. unpublished ms., . Turkle, Sherry. Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. New York: Basic, 2011. Print.