Monday, October 10, 2005

Comment on "Interview with Paul Virilio"

While I read the "Interview with Paul Virilio", Paul's views on cyberspace and what is virtuality and reality surprised me. One of the quotes that interests me the most is when Paul says, "I believe that the word is already old-fashioned. As I see it, new technologies are substituting a virtual reality for an actual reality... We are entering a world where there won't be one but two realities... the actual, and the virtual." This quote made me aware of how much technology and the cyberspace it created are dominating our lives.
Moreover, Paul's comment on how the concept of "cybersex", "[people being able to] changed into some kind of spectrum or ghost who has sex at a distance", is really alarming because "what used to be the most intimate and the most important relationship to reality is being split." It does sound scary because it seems like one day the virtual world will eventually replace the reality.
However, there were also many wordy passages from Paul that confused me. For example, when he mentiones how the flight simulator is closer to cyberspace than the television, he explaines, "What is accidented is reality. Virtuality will destroy reality. So, it's some kind of accident, but an accident of a very different nature. The accident is not the accident. For instance, if I let this glass fall, is it an accident? No, it's the reality of the glass that is accidented, not the glass itself. The glass is certainly broken and no longer exists, but with a flight simulator, what is accidented is the reality of the glass, and not the glass itself: what is accidented is the reality of the whole world. Cyberspace is an accident of the real. Virtual reality is the accident of reality itself." It makes me wonder if cyberspace is becoming reality.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home