.VIRTUAL.

Is digital technology seeking to create reality? Over the semester we have learnt about widescreen TV’s and home theatre systems where you can get lost in a film. We have learnt of games which can take a player into another world, of virtual reality, of the cybourg and the belief that the human can be modified and at some point in the future possibly even created. It seems that technology is endlessly striving to advance from the virtual, the representation of reality towards the actual.

Luke mentioned that we as humans have this inbuilt prejudice against something that is virtual, something that aspires to be real. Yet, at the same time I think we have a fascination with it as well that is not always negative.

Fond memories start wafting back of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the book that is… where towards the end they are in the TV room and witness a chocolate bar being transported through the air by television… that’ll be the day. Where virtual can become actual and I can take that Wendy’s burger that looks so good, strangle Goldstein and his American Boss and procure myself one of those flash new Sanyo phones.

Until then we are stuck with the virtual with all its short comings. Stuck in reality where you have to use your imagination. We can escape reality to an extent through technology and imagination, or through drugs or the milk of Shadows… yet I don’t know if well ever be able to overcome it.