A recent article on the BBC Internet Service was surely indulging in a little irony when it reported on Himanshu Tyagi’s declaration that social networking websites such as Facebook posed a potential danger to children and adolescents Weltanschauung. The crux of the argument seemed to rest on the fact that the Internet facilitated a false view of ‘the real world’. Reading the subtext, it seemed that Tyagi implied that the main problems were centred on the Internet’s ease of utilization, continuous sensual stimulation and lack of consequences embodied in virtual reality, which would then render the real world ‘boring and unstimulating’ and could eventually lead to ‘more vulnerable to impulsive behaviour or even suicide.’ In short, the argument presented is a conservative one, positioning the old as the real and the new as the not-real. I believe that perhaps it would be better to view this discourse in the context of the real versus the yet-to-be-realized.
The latest (r)evolution in human consciousness, for this is exactly what it is, promises to effect not only a mental change but may perhaps also lead to a corporal change for humanity. How can one say just where the line between the real and the virtual lies, particularly since the advent of the Internet and digital technology? Everything now can be done online, from transferring one’s millions to the other side of the world to buying the weekly groceries and having them delivered straight to one’s home.
To read about what the social science community was discussing concerning the revolution in technology, consciousness and virtual reality in general, I turned to the IBSS database. In my first search, I used the term ‘virtual reality’, a search which yielded a gratifying 550 results. Scanning through the first 40 results showed that a good majority dealt with the virtual reality online worlds/communities involved in Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs). Of the many, perhaps the most completely immersive is Second Life. More than a game or a social networking site, it is as its name specifies a virtual construct which functions as a world in which one can lead a second life and do everything that one normally does in the ‘real world’. For example, ‘Manon of second life: teaching in the virtual world,’ Molly W. Berger ( 2008 ) explores the fact that not only is the Internet now used for gaming, but also for serious education. Granted, the phenomenon of total virtual immersion hasn’t yet reached such proportions as to call for improved governance or a virtual equivalent of state/social control, but the spread of new media into every domain of life is relentless and omnipresent. Typing the search terms ‘internet’ and ‘life’ into the IBSS database returned an even richer harvest of 899 results. Among these, ‘Life in Happy Land: using virtual space and doing motherhood in Hong Kong,’ Annie Hau-nung Chan ( 2008 ) and ‘The targets of online protest,’ Jennifer Earl and Katrina Kimport ( 2008 ) show the extent of the infiltration. The first article deals with a group of working mothers in Hong Kong which depends on the Internet to help them fulfil their work obligations as well as reinforcing their domestic work identities. The article shows the facilitating role that the use of new media has played in developing the virtual relationships among these women into face-to-face friendships. The second article examines the role that the Internet plays in the mobilization of social protest against and resistance to state authority by social movements of individuals. I then ran another search using ‘virtual reality’ and ‘space’ which gave me 81 results. One article which examined the fundamental change in reality was ‘The creative reconstruction of the Internet: Google and the privatization of cyberspace and Digiplace,’ Matthew A. Zook et al. (2007), which examined the interaction between cyber- and physical space, and how changes in each domain affected the other. This convergence of the virtual and the real mirrors the convergence in the various technological domains previously mentioned: if this continues in the manner which it has been going, there will soon no longer be a divide between the virtual and the real — we will equally belong to the Internet and the real world. Who knows if in time we will not spend the majority of our time in cyberspace: what will then be real and what pretend? To examine this further, I typed in ‘technological’ and ‘revolution’ and ‘cyberspace’ which yielded 3 results, one of which dealt with the issue of contemporary disillusionment with the future. ‘In formational intimacy and futuristic flu: love and confusion in the matrix,’ Paul A. Taylor (2001) examines the toll which the ever-increasing speed of innovation and change is taking on contemporary humans and society, wearing us down in the physical world even though we may be up to speed in the virtual.
The technological revolution has already begun, although there are those of its observers who seem to be a little cautious on just how sweeping the changes will be in the decades ahead, or go to the opposite extreme and proclaim that its changes are going much too quickly . I believe that both the scope and the effects of change have been wrongly viewed. The future lies in mastering the convergence of the technological revolutions. The line between what is ‘virtual’ and what is ‘real’ is already blurring, and in the not-too-distant future will no longer exist, and humanity will truly have become an amalgam of energy and matter. For what is the Internet but energy and thought hosted by matter? And what are humans if not fundamentally the same?
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