The questions I’ve been asking the last two days were intended to get at something quite specific: The evolving relationship between advancing media technology and our experience of reality.
For a very long time, we didn’t need to think too much about the choice between “media” and “reality”. They were clearly different from each other in so many ways. Reading a novel is very different from making love to one’s partner. Each of these experiences brings something to your life that the other clearly does not.
For the first half century of the computer age, interactive media was, on a visceral level, no match for reality itself. The touch or caress of another human being, the deep emotions shared when two people look into each others’ eyes, there were the province of reality.
Sure, we would play our video games, watch our high definition movies, immerse ourselves in one cyber-enabled fantasy or another, but at the end of the day, we understood that it was all make believe. The real human being lying right next to us has the power to touch our souls that goes beyond the reach of mere technology.
But what if we are nearing a cusp? What if the intensely vivid quality once reserved for physical reality begins to seep into virtual shared experience? I’m not saying that this will happen any time soon, but I suspect that it may well happen in our life times.
And when it does, we may need to rethink a lot of our assumptions.
Would you consider phone calls or SMS a “virtual shared experience?” I feel more connected to my parents who live thousands of miles away because of SMS. That’s just lines on a screen. There’s nothing high def about lines on a screen. Yet, they make me feel loved. Today’s technology already make my long distance relationships seem less long distance. I think that indicates that some aspect of face-to-face is being replaced.
RE: the “intensely vivid quality” of physical reality. One way to interpret that is the quality of the input. Another way to interpret that is the quality of how people feel upon receiving the inputs. The second interpretation doesn’t require high quality inputs of futureland.