In
its growing diversification, consumer technology is extending itself into our
lives in more and more ways. A new
device created by the Israeli company Oculus, a company that now belongs to
Facebook, is going to totally transform the world of video gaming. It is a wearable computer device called the
Rift, and you put it over the head. You
put on the device and you enter a world of virtual reality. Now there are many potential uses for this
device, but one that will be of major importance will be that of allowing a
person to actually experience living within a video game. Not watching it from the outside and
manipulating it from outside, but actually being a part of it.
Gamers
will, of course, love this. They will be
able to have a visceral experience of the game in which they are
participating. It will be qualitatively
different from anything they have done in the past. It will provide an incredibly heightened
level of excitement, an incredible rush.
It
will also have some incredibly dangerous side effects. Virtual reality starts out being a distinct
compartment within human experience. But
just as people start blending together with computers and robots as they enter
the world of experience of these machines, so the borders that exist between virtual
reality, on the one hand, and the primary experience of the real world, on the
other, will start to blur.
Video
games are already an addiction for many young people. Imagine how much more of an addiction will be
created by a game in which one temporarily has no experience of any world of
experience outside of virtual reality.
And video games can be so exciting.
By contrast, for most people in modern technological society, life in
the primary experience world has become pretty bland, predictable, pedestrian
and mundane. So if borders blur between
virtual reality and the primary experience world, the direction of the blending
is going to be from the virtual reality to the primary experience world,
infusing the latter with traits of the former.
This
means that everyday life in primary experience becomes infused with traits of
the video game. Unlike everyday life, a
game is built on defined discrete rules.
One’s actions in a game have very precise parameters within which they
can operate. Because there are defined
actions or moves for playing a game, we can say that there is a delimited
infinity of possible actions or moves in a game, unlike life in the world of
primary experience where there is a flowing nondelimited infinity of possible
actions or moves. Returning to the
discussions I have had of different kinds of infinity, we can say that the
infinity of actions or moves in a game corresponds to the infinity of whole
numbers (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc. – both positive and negative). And the infinity of actions or moves in life
in general more closely corresponds to the infinity of the number of points on
a line. Infinity theory in math teaches
that the number of points on a line is greater than the number of whole
numbers.
So,
to the extent that the virtual reality game could infuse our daily lives in the
real world, it could gradually mold our responses in life to be like game
responses and create a diminished infinity of response possibilities. The focus would be more on black and white
moves and actions rather than moves and actions based on a nondelimited
infinity of shadings and nuances. The
focus will be more on a delimited infinity of defined discrete actions and
moves that follow one another rather than a nondelimited infinity of blendable
continual moves that flow into one another.
Furthermore,
a game model for life presupposes a person moving through life with a series of
tactics and strategies for always winning.
Such a life posture is not conducive to a person actually bonding with
other humans.
Finally,
playing in a game does not leave strong imprints on the surface of a field of
experience in the way that making a baby, building a business, planting a tree,
painting a picture or writing a book does.
Yes, in formal competitions, trophies are won and records are created,
but such imprints are not left in ordinary private games. And in video games, which people frequently
play by themselves, there is not even the fleeting imprint that results from
defeating an opponent. Recording a new
high score on the video game itself is more like an impersonal mark than an
imprint. There is no organic surface in
cyberspace that can act as a template for making strong imprints. And if a person is immersed in video games,
he doesn’t have much time to make and preserve meaningful imprints to create a
meaningful surrogate immortality and prepare for death.
It
is not just video games for which the
Rift can be used in human life applications.
One category of uses is the creation of a virtual representation of a
task situation, so that a person can practice a task without making mistakes
that could lead to serious consequences.
One example of this is a doctor performing virtual operations before
actually operating on a patient. In
other words, supposedly the doctor would be able to perfect his technique
without injuring or killing his patient.
But
there may be a problem here. Because of the lack of grounding in a material
world, virtual reality is based in an experiential vacuum. Experiential vacuums as a substrate create
numbness in people, even when there is a lot of exciting dynamic surface
activity occurring as in rock concerts.
The overstimulation of the rock concerts is a layer of experience that
exists over the understimulation of an experiential vacuum from the lack of
grounding of young people in modern life.
By the same token, underneath the excitement based on doing a highly
skilled risky activity in virtual reality, there is a substrate of numbness
living within the virtual reality. Living
a lot in virtual reality while practicing a virtual operation will make a
doctor increasingly numb. And the vacuum
base of virtual reality will blur into real time performance. Rather than preparing a doctor in a safe
environment, virtual operations could increase the doctor’s state of numbness even
in the material world and cause him to feel understimulated while carrying over
the state of experience he had in virtual reality. In other words, mistakes can be made from
numbness rather than from the anxiety resulting from practice in real-life
performance. Or, by contrast, performing
the operation in real life could seem very overstimulating in comparison to the
practice that occurred in virtual reality.
After practicing in virtual reality, practicing in the material world
could generate even more anxiety, more nervousness than if the person had
started practicing the operation right away in the material world through
primary experience.
Another
possible task situation is when a student driver is taught how to parallel park
a car in virtual reality before actually doing it in a car. Such a situation creates similar difficulties
to a doctor operating on a patient. A
student driver could carry over the state of numbness that he feels when he
practices parallel parking in virtual reality and be more prone to making
mistakes as a result. Or the student
driver could be overstimulated by actually having to parallel park in the real
world, and increased anxiety and nervousness, as a result, could lead again to
being more prone to mistakes.
Finally, another
application being conjectured is to be able to talk in the same room with
someone who is actually far away. Here
we have similar problems to those created by Skype, only more so. Talking with a three-dimensional image of
someone is not the same as talking to someone in the flesh. It is a numbing vacuumized experience that will
spill over into human interactions in the real world of primary
experience. And again, it will numb
encounters with real life people, so that bonds that are formed will be more
shallow and tenuous. Or else it will
make encounters with real life people seem overstimulating and
anxiety-producing, and induce a person to withdraw from such
relationships. Either way, it will make it
more difficult for a person to sustain deep-bonded relationships in the real
world of primary experience.
The
point is that virtual reality is not a safe neutral environment. It is a sensorily distorted environment that,
as a result of the experiential vacuum it creates for humans, also creates new
and different dangers for humans.
These
dangers must be fully considered, before people start to eagerly embrace the
idea of getting involved in all the different possible applications available
in this exotic new world of experience.
People need organic friction to feel fully alive, something they are not
going to get in virtual reality and its vacuumized world. Virtual reality will lead to virtual life.
© 2014 Laurence Mesirow
No comments:
Post a Comment