Message-Id: <v03102804b14028c8c150@[194.109.13.153]>
In-Reply-To: <3.0.3.32.19980326115843.007a0840@pop.netaddress.com>
Date: Thu, 26 Mar 1998 18:16:44 +0200
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
From: Ton Maas <tonmaas@xs4all.nl>
Subject: Re: The Memetics of the Army - a logical proof
>I also have a particular attitude against the "Virtual Reality". It is not
>at all virtual (how reality can be virtual?) until it resides on such real
>things like computers, modems, satellites and other technological stuff. It
>is only another way of, as you say, "externalization of the internal".
>Doesn`t writers, movie makers and other artists do already the same thing
>using other technological means. You will say "Yes, but it is interactive".
>So what? It doesn`t mean that it is self-dependent or self-reliant. It is
>the same thing as when speaking about "information transmission" and
>abstracting the source and destination systems. "Information" has a mean
>only for this systems, not for itself.
This may be off the mark altogether, but Virtual Reality originally had
very little to do with computers. The term comes from research into remote
control in hazardous situations - done in the early eighties - which
yielded a quite surprizing result, namely that if two or three senses are
"fooled" simultaneously, our mind is tricked into believing we are actually
at the remote site, even though we "know" that's not really the case.
Ton
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