New Media, part 2

Suppose you had never heard of holotheatre, and somebody invited you to see a robo-play. Imagine how strange the experience would be.

All of those robots rolling around the room, saying things that were actually the words of humans, and touching people who are wearing VR headsets. You might be appalled at the people who are interacting with these odd machines, wandering about in what is clearly a make believe reality, acting as though everything about this made up world is real.

Every once in a while, one of these crazy robots would roll toward some audience member, who wouldn’t seem to know the robot is there. The robot might do something weird like hand the audience member a glass of water, or blow air in their face. Even worse, the robot might start singing — and the person holding the glass of water wouldn’t seem to realize that a robot has burst into song.

“Hey!” you might be tempted to shout to the robots, “Why are you harassing these people?”

But your major worry would be reserved for the audience. All of these apparently intelligent citizens, falling for an obvious trick. Why, you might ask yourself, don’t they realize that those robots among them are merely pretending to be human?

2 thoughts on “New Media, part 2”

  1. Thanks! I would keep going with it, but one jump forward into the future might be as far as I can go with any real confidence.

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