From: mike@x.co.uk (Mike Moore)
Subject: Re: PHIL: Escape into the artificial world (Was Re: SOC: Social
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1992 12:54:57 GMT
Organization: IXI Limited, Cambridge, UK



In an attempt to make things a little easier for future archaelogists :-)

In article <1992Apr12.001506.1664@u.washington.edu> bew@brahms.udel.edu (Ben Williams) writes:
>
>...hasn't the WEST been at the
>fore-front of turning the world into one big Disneyland.

No.  The WEST has had very little to do with it.  It is the product of
a particular, popular, philosophy known as materialism or capitalism.

>Haven't we
>always had this thing about the natural world being an enemy to be
>conquered and overcome, to be put under our control.

By 'we' I assume you mean 'human beings'.  The answer is YES.  It has
to be this way or we would have died out as a species a *long* time
ago.

"Oh, nice little tiger!  Can I pat you?  Oh!  You're all soft
and cuddly."

>Just as we had to
>conquer and bring under control the 'savages' that inhabited this continent
>before we came along.

Deplorable though it may have been, I wouldn't say that it won't
happen again.  HUMAN kind is BUILT this way.

>And haven't MEN been the prime movers of this
>policy.

And who was responsible for bringing up the MEN in this way?

>Maybe I am out of line here, but I think woman have always had a
>stronger connection to the earth and obviously a more maternal outlook.

Yip.

>And I think much less inclined to go along with this usurpation of nature
>that we men have been a party to.

Nope.

>I do regret including the 'White', but
>it is such a fitting color to give to a people who have such a lack of real
>humanity...

Hang on...  How can a human being (of any colour) lack 'real humanity'?
Unless you mean some fictionalised, idealised view of what a human
being is, in which case your view is false.

>But of course I shouldn't be generalizing, it is a very bad habit with me.
>And as my friend once said, 'all generalizations are false'.  But the
>astute among you should have recognized immediately what is going on.  When
>I say:
>
>  Virtual Reality is the latest attempt of Western White man to turn away
>  from the natural world into an artificial one, since he can't hack it
>  with the former.  HE has lost it and he is totally lost...
>
>what I really mean is:
>
>  Virtual Reality is my latest attempt to turn away from the natural world
>  into an artificial one, since I can't hack it with the former.  I have
>  lost it and I am totally lost...
>
>I am merely projecting my own feeling onto everyone else which I really
>have no right to do.

I appreciate your statement.  I also am guilty many times of the same
thing.

>...What I am objecting to is this use of VR as another 'reality' for living.

Where?  Who?  When?  With what?  As far as I'm aware, the concept of
'living' in a VR is completely and entirely fictional.  Unless you
know better of course.

>..What has me bothered is this almost
>religious view that I am seeing coming out of the VR crowd.  I am saying
>this is just another extension of our drive to get away from it all.

And I agree.

>It (I
>am talking about this one aspect of VR) is just another ESCAPE.

And this I disagree with.

All ANIMALS are fundamentally designed to cope with the world.  Where
possible the ANIMAL will change its immediate surroundings in order to
cope better.  A rabbit will dig a warren, a man will build a house, a
bird will build a nest.  If rabbits had become the dominant intellectual
force on Earth, they would currently be discussing the problems they
had with 'over-warrenation' of the sub-soil due to over-population in
certain (dare I say WESTERN) areas!

Along with intellectual awareness (and bearing in mind that the HUMAN
species is the single example of this, so far) seems to come
imagination.  Imagination allows the intellectual being (be s/he HUMAN
or RABBIT) to alter h/er/is surroundings in new ways, not just
preprogrammed (pre-DNA'd?) ways.  In other words (in the broadest
sense) to ESCAPE from reality by CHANGING it.

>Yes, like
>painting or driving or watching movies or working or writing on the net.
>But what I would like to do, and I think other people should be doing, is
>instead of developing neat and keeno new ways to escape, they should be
>asking themselves: "Why do I find it necessary to escape?  What am I trying
>to escape?"

You, I, all of us, find it necessary to ESCAPE because we are
intelligent.  It comes with the territory.

>We have in place now a very rudimentary form of VR, and its called TV
>(another thing I'm bothered about VR is the way its proponents have a
>tendency to view everything through its own terminology, a definite
>indication of a religion).  Am I the only one who is bothered by the fact
>the kids today spend (I don't know the figures) anywhere around 7 hours per
>day in front of a TV?  When I was little we used to play in the woods and
>down by the creek.  I had SOME relationship with nature.

How old are you?  I would have thought that you were much younger than
50, for you to have grown up in a world not dominated by TV.  Or, if
you are younger than 50, are you telling me that YOU are unusual and
that YOU were the only kid to switch off the TV and go to the woods.
How many kids today live within walking distance of a wood or a
creek?

>As my brother
>said, you don't seem to see kids doing this anymore.

Do you go looking for them?  :-)

>Can you imagine the seductiveness of VR if it
>gets to the stage that people are projecting?  Don't you find this a little
>scary?  Do you for a moment believe that our commercial world will not take
>advantage of this new way to reach (and shape) its customers.

Being environmentally friendly is new.  Do you for a moment believe that
our commercial world will not take advantage of this new way to reach
(and shape) its customers?

>...But just
>imagine, if VR really goes to the limits it is capable of, we can all live
>in our own DisneyWorld right in our living rooms (or basements).  We can
>have beautiful lanscapes and vistas with all kinds of beautiful trees and
>flowers and things we never even imagined.  It will make the real world
>look like a dim boring old B&W photograph by comparison.

Look, I don't know what kind of guy you are.  But if you really think
that a set of pixels on a flat screen is going to look any better than
the real thing you're in for a shock.  Even today's couch potatoe kids
get up and mug someone every now and again.

>Now lets say the
>kids really take to this new fantasyland.  Don't you think they are gonna
>have a little trouble understanding why anyone would care if the last
>redwoods in the Pacific Northwest have been chopped down?

I'd say that most of them, and MOST of the GROWN-UPS have a little
trouble understanding why anyone would care *right now*.

>I mean after
>all, the trees in their VR fantasyland are much prettier and much more
>available to view than those other dirty trees.  But oh, you say, if we
>live in a VR world there will be no more need to cut down the trees.  Umm,
>well maybe, but the point is we will have much less interest in what
>happens to trees or other species that might be on the edge of extinction,
>or just the REAL world in general. Ok, you are saying, VR is not capable of
>competing with the natural world.  Well, TV is already doing pretty well,
>and its resolution ain't too good and it doesn't move with your body.

I *doesn't* do pretty well.  For it to do 'well' a person would have
to stop doing other things in order to watch the TV.  Those people who
watch wild-life programs don't stop visiting wild-life reserves.  In
fact it *encourages* people to take more interest in the world around
them.

>The more we 'move' into these artificial worlds, the less we care about the
>rest of the world.  Does anyone doubt this?

I doubt it.

>Today, if you want to go into
>the city, you still have to see poor people, the homeless, the decay.  We
>have some connection to it.  But we continue to remove ourselves from it
>and it continues to decay.

Does this mean that the efforts to 'Feed the World' were doomed to
failure because they were shown on a TV screen instead of taking every
individual to Ethiopia to gain a connection?

>Does anyone think that television is something good and beneficial for
>society in general?  Well I sure don't.  I agree with the people who are
>saying "Kill Your Television."  I managed to finally break away from this
>one addiction anyway after becoming so sickened by last year's Gulf War
>propaganda and the U.S. Government approved snuff films.

No one ever said that *anything* was perfect.

>Am I the only one who when he sees something as seductive as VR could
>become thinks, hey wait a minute.  Isn't this almost satanic?  Yes, yes,
>all those important new inventions (steam engine, cars, radio, TV) had
>their detractors who called them 'works of the devil'.  Well, were they
>that far off?  If someone from 100 years ago could see how we live today,
>what do you think they would think about it?  Life is certainly more
>convenient, but have we not lost our moral underpinnings?  (Suicide is one
>of the leading causes of death among young people today.  Why do you
>suppose all these people are killing themselves?

People have always committed suicide.  People will always continue to
committ suicide.  It's nature's way of weeding.  Do you regard suicide
as evil?  How would you stop someone who just broke up with his
girlfriend throwing himself off a building?  That kind of suicide will
happen in *any* society.  It always has, it always will, we are BUILT
that way.

>Did you ever think it
>might be somehow connected to the fact that so many of them got to grow up
>suckling a vacuum tube spewing out reams of banal commercial garbage into
>their developing minds.

No.

>Thank god for the forerunners of VR for giving us
>these great distractions as we grew up, so we might not worry about more
>fundamental needs we may have been missing...)  These inventions have all
>helped us in our attainment of progress.  But what kind of progress?  Just
>where are we progressing towards?

We are progressing towards something different to that which we have.

>I know its crazy for me to be
>criticizing a world I grew up in and is in my very being and probably
>couldn't live without.  But hey, that's what I do... hehe...

Hey, it's what you're *supposed* to do.  NOT doing it means you're
dead.

>Mike Moore states:  "Virtual reality has at its roots, the ability to
>provide humanity with a new form of entertainment, and entertainment in its
>broadest sense is the foundation of everything that we as human beings do."
>I think this is kindof the thing I am objecting to.  Do you really think
>the reason we were put on this earth was to be entertained?

Yes.  I believe that entertainment constitutes an emotion derived from
the application of originality.  If no one 'entertains' me I'll
entertain myself.  If I can't 'entertain' myself I'll probably commit
suicide.  A cave-man who never entertained himself by thinking about how
to catch his next meal would not only be unentertained, he'd be dead.

>I hereby
>submit the above quote to future archaeologists digging through the rubble
>of the Earth trying to figure out where we went wrong...
>
>As I said, as a tool, I think VR is great.  But does anyone doubt that here
>in these United States that VR will not be used for other ends.  That's the
>way things work here.  If there exists a means of doing something, and
>there is no law against doing this thing, someone will use that means.

That's a problem the United States has to solve.  Not the VR
community.

>But I do like what Jim Lai says:  "But, hey, some people say you can find
>enlightenment anywhere."  I hope those people are right...
>
>
>Ben.
>
>
>Ben Williams
>bew@brahms.udel.edu
>
>               What we got here is a failure to communicate... 


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